Re: Problem with GNAT modified GPL and SourceForge

[David Starner <dvdeug@x8b4e53cd.dhcp.okstate.edu>]

On Mon, 11 Feb 2002 10:07:35 -0500, Marin David Condic <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[> wrote:
> And I
> think there's some maximum number of years a copyright can be renewed
> anyway - 99 years? - so its a good bet this stuff has slipped into the
> Public Domain. :-)

It's considerably more hairy then that, and no country I know of still
requires copyrights to be renewed, but yes, Shakespear is in the public
domain.
 
> Anybody is free to make and sell - or give away - copies of Shakespear's
> "Hamlet" provided that they make copies from a public domain source. (Once
> you put it into a book of your own though, you can have a copyright on that
> instance of "Hamlet" so photocopying your book and redistributing it would
> be a violation. But that's another story.)

A copyright requires creative work, at least in the US. Just taking a
public domain copy of Hamlet and slapping it onto paper does not
qualify; you'd have to add copyrighted pictures, footnotes or endnotes
to get copyright on it (again, in the US.) If you look at most of the
Penguin Books, or the Dover books (two companies that slap* public domain
text onto paper, mainly for cheap college editions), they claim
copyright on the introduction, but not on the text.

* The negative connotations are well deserved in some cases, as they
don't often bother resetting the text, instead just making a straight
photocopy of an older setting.

-- 
David Starner - starner@okstate.edu
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
What we've got is a blue-light special on truth. It's the hottest thing 
with the youth. -- Information Society, "Peace and Love, Inc."