Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!decwrl!hplabs!hpl-opus!hpccc!hpcc01!hpwrce!howeird
From: howeird@hpwrce.HP.COM (Howard Stateman)
Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop
Subject: Re: Copyright Free or not?
Message-ID: <7650008@hpwrce.HP.COM>
Date: 5 Jun 89 20:34:19 GMT
References: <5829@microsoft.UUCP>
Organization: Ye Olde Salt Mines
Lines: 43

karl@grebyn.com (Karl Nyberg) writes:

>There's a little leap of faith here that I think is being missed.  As far as
>I know, it IS legal to copyright public domain material.  And there is
>nothing to prevent somebody else from taking the same public domain material
>and publishing it themselves (with their copyright).

I think we have a semantics problem here, It is definitely legal to 
include public domain material in a copyrighted publication. It's free,
it requires no permissions or even notes as to its source. However,
this does not mean you have copyrighted the public domain material. You
haven't. You've copyrighted your material, and the form in which you have
presented it. The PD material stays in the public domain.

> HOWEVER, it is illegal
>to take the copyrighted material (in the form published) and copy it.  That
>is, it would be illegal for you to take the nice parchment copy of the
>Constitution that somebody has prepared and duplicate from their work.  You
>may certainly go back to the original source and duplicate from that.

Yes and no. The original Constitution IS on parchment, and for me to
take their reproduction as my source might be unethical, it is not 
illegal. If they added no value to the PD material, there would be
no way for them to prove it was theirs that I used as the source. And
it wouldn't much matter anyway, since you cannot steal something that
is in the public domain. Public domain MEANS the public owns it.

>Further, if somebody were to ADD something to the document being published
>(in this case the Constitution), such as index, cross-references, etc., etc.
>this additional material would clearly NOT be in the public domain and
>reproduction of their additoin, including supporting material, would also
>be subject to copyright protection.

Yes, exactly.


 --------------------------------------------------------------------
|Howard Stateman, Hewlett-Packard Response Center, Mountain View, CA |
|howeird@hpwrce.HP.COM      or     hplabs!hpwrce!howeird             |
|Disclaimer: I couldn't possibly speak for HP. I know too much.      |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Sysop of the Anatomically Correct BBS (415) 364-3739                |
 --------------------------------------------------------------------