Re: Scott Adams & Legalities


12 Nov 1995 11:21:31 GMT

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...