Re: Scott Adams & Legalities
Mon, 13 Nov 95 11:45:21 MET
In article <484lbr$r10@boris.eden.com>
montfort@eden.com (Nick Montfort) writes:
>
>Gareth Rees (gdr11@cl.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
>: Mike Pelletier <sshifter@ophelia.waterloo.net> wrote:
>: > Well, [the Scott Adams games] have been made public domain FOR THE
>: > SPECTRUM, but I can't say for sure about anything else.
>
>: Bjorn Gustavsson <ermbgus@at.ericsson.se> wrote:
>: > If the games would be converted from the Spectrum format to, say,
>: > Zmachine format, would the converted games also be public domain?
>: > Anyone knows?
>
>: Almost certainly not. At least in the UK, copyright law is very strict
>: with regard to a work's medium.
>
> Yes, but if a work is truly placed in the public domain, one can do just
>about anything (if not anything) with it legally. You can't make just
>certain rights, e.g. rights for the Spectrum, public domain: A work as a
>whole is or isn't public domain, not a set of rights to that work. Once a
>work enters the public domain, you can convert it to other media, charge
>for it (or at least try to), remove attribution from it and otherwise
>change it, etc. For more info, see the copyright FAQ:
>(ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/law/copyright/faq/part2) and
>skip down to section 2.2.
> That's not to say that a free license or some other permission was the
>thing that was really granted, rather than the work being granted into
>the public domain...
There are two meanings to the word public domain, which is the reason I try
to use the word a little as possible, because it always creates misunder-
standings.
The legal meaning is that you have given up all copyright. In this sense
there should not be any public domain on the Internet, as some countries
do not allow the giving up of copyrights.
The more popular meaning is anything that is freely distributable. When
you are talking about the Public Domain scene, or about PD-libraries,
you're using this meaning.
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