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Re: data "copyright" or not -- what is Debian's take?



On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 at 14:06:49 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> I don't see a need to specify “data”. What's wrong with “work”, the term
> normally seen in English-language copyright discussions for any
> information covered by copyright?

Since the issue under discussion is things that might or might not be covered
by copyright, I wasn't sure whether "work" as legal jargon implies
"copyrightable thing" (and hence isn't applicable to non-copyrightable things);
avoiding the term presumably sidesteps that :-)

> > >     Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
> > >     [... and the rest of the usual MIT license text]
> 
> Where “the usual MIT license text” presumably means the more precise
> “terms of the Expat license”.

Yes, I meant the Expat license (or in fact, what I really meant was "insert
the terms of your favourite permissive license here", but the Expat license
is a good choice).

> So long as the terms are as I specified above, I think that's a good
> strategy also, but it is only effective if done by the copyright holders
> (not unilaterally by a third party).

I don't see how anyone who isn't the copyright holder[1] could offer a license
for material that might be copyrightable, but yes, it's worth emphasizing that.

    S

[1] by which I really mean: "entity who would be the copyright holder if the
    work was copyrightable, which it might be, or not". Superpositions
    of states are hard to talk about precisely :-)


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