Re: simple translation copyright issues

[Elizabeth Barham <lizzy@soggytrousers.net>]

Branden writes:

> _Matthew Bender and Hyperlaw v. West_ and _Feist Publications,
> Inc. v.  Rural Telephone Service Co._ would indicate "no" (in the
> United States), but I don't think there's anything *squarely* on
> point.

I'm not sure who Hyperlaw is but I'm familiar with West. As I recall,
there was a case where one company took West's publications and sent
them to another country where they employed many people to type-in
West's documents which was found perfectly legal (the legal documents
themselves could not be copyrighted but West's hold on the documents
is that they created them).

Like I said, I typed these in by hand.

> I would say go ahead.  If no one can reasonably tell what work
> you're "infringing", that's a good case for either 1)
> copyrightability by you or 2) uncopyrightability of the work
> altogether.
> 
> In the former case, if you apply a DFSG-free license to the work,
> then you're just fine for Debian main.

I consider it public domain anyway so naturally that's how its going
to be released.

Thank you everyone for your feedback.

Elizabeth