Re: Legal status of short, perhaps uncopyrightable program (fwd)
Lewis Jardine <debian@catbox.co.uk> wrote:
> MJ Ray wrote:
> > http://www.spatula.net/software/sex/ says "Original author unknown.
> > Presumably this is public domain by now." Anyone know why they
> > presume that? [...]
>
> Possibly they're thinking it was public-domained when the author posted
> the full source to usenet? Depending on the country it was posted from,
> might there be some form of implied license, similar to what happens to
> the copyrighted text of a mailing list post?
In general, that seems to be number 3 on the list of 10 Big Myths
about copyright at http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
It's possible that it was posted from somewhere that required
copyright registration. I think we'd need to be fairly sure of
that, because it seems rare now and spatula files are dated 2001.
Thanks,
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct
Reply to: