On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 01:00:07PM -0700, John Galt wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Jeffry Smith wrote:
>
> >John Galt said:
> >> On Sun, 25 Feb 2001, Sam TH wrote:
> >> >This statement of freely available, however, also conflicts with the
> >> >examples given for "freely availableness", such as usenet. Nothing
> >> >about a usenet posting implies free redistibutability. In fact,
> >> >Usenet postings are all copyrighted, and unless specific other license
> >> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >> Case law? Cite?
> >>
> >
> >Since, according to Copyright Law, all writings are copyrighted
> >unless explicitly stated otherwise, yes, Usenet postings are
> >copyrighted.
>
> Said copyright law was made by the Berne Convention, which postdates this
> license. In fact the previous standard was "PD unless stated" (that's
> actually a stretch, the real law involved was that no rights were reserved
> unless specifically stated, hence the "all rights reserved" language of
> many copyright notices).
And the fact that the AL was written prior to the current copyright
law is relevant how? If A new law appears, which changes the meaning
of something in a license, that certainly changes the DFSG freeness of
the license. Or do you think that licenses are interpreted under the
law as it was when they were written?
Second, Perl was released in the mid-80s. The current copyright law
is ten years older than that. I don't know exactly when the AL was
written, but this would suggest that it postdates the Copyright Act of
1976.
sam th
sam@uchicago.edu
http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
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