Re: NEC Licence (Work of US Gov. Employees)
Raul Miller <rdm@test.legislate.com> writes:
> Hmm.. are you saying that U.S. citizens do *not* have the right to
> distribute [unclassified] U.S. government works overseas, under any
> license?
If there is a license, no problem. But if there is no license neither
U.S. or non-U.S. citizens have that right outside of the USA.
> If so, I'd like to know what law(s) or court decision(s) you base this on.
The laws of the "overseas" country which supposedly implement the
Berne convention. This states that one does not have the permission to
multiply works without the express permission of the copyright
holder (or under other conditions that are irrelevant here).
And the U.S. government has apparently not granted the right
to do that, as witnessed by the quotes we've already seen.
That is, the U.S. government *could* sue me under Danish law
if I manufactured copies of said material in Denmark. No Danish
law would prevent it from winning - I would have the burden of
proving that I'd been granted a license from the U.S. government.
Which I can't, because the section of U.S. Code that people appeals
to has been carefully worded to only restrict the applicability of
*American* copyright law to the work - not to grant a world-wide
free license for anyone to use it.
--
Henning Makholm
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