Re: [tlug] linux in Japanese schools

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Jean-Christophe Helary writes:

 > The public domain is yet another thing. In public domain there is no  
 > copyright per definition. Plus it is extremely difficult to actually  
 > _put_ something in the public domain since _any_ intellectual work is  
 > considered to automatically generate copyright.

Larry Rosen claims that under U.S. law it's just as easy to put
something in the public domain as it is to put it under GPL.

And that's part of *real legal advice* I have received, which I will
be billed for at some point. ;-)

 > Public domain works have no restriction whatsoever for use.  

Depends on jurisdiction.  There is no public domain in the sense used
in the U.S. in Germany, for example; author's moral rights remain in
force no matter what the author says or signs.  I don't know if it's
possible to alienate *all* of your non-moral rights in Germany, nor
whether you personally would consider that "public domain" if it were
possible.

Also, I haven't thought about it carefully, but I suspect that it is
possible to make a useful and viable distinction between "use" of a
work by copying some part of it, and "use" of a work by claiming a
relation such as authorship to that work.  If so, I would be satisfied
that a work with no restrictions on copying would be in the "public
domain" even if the author asserts her right to be identified as the
author of the work.

 > Plagiarism cannot be punished. Other abuses can't either.

Of course plagiarism of public domain works can be punished, because
plagiarism is not primarily an abuse of the author.  You'll have to be
more specific about the other abuses.

 > Although that needs to be tested in courts, it would be technically
 > possible to put a new copyright on a public domain work (partial or
 > total) since nobody protects the non-existing original copyright.

Dead wrong.  You can't copyright a verbatim copy of a public domain
work.  In fact, you can't copyright it at all; exhibiting a copy in
the public domain would be a full defense to any infringement
complaint.  What you can do, however, is mix public domain work with
copyrightable work.  In some cases, it is possible to copy parts of
the copyrighted work with impunity (for example, if you make a
specific collection of Bach fugues in a specific order, with
commentary in between, the whole work is copyright you, as is the
commentary, but anyone is free to copy the individual fugues).  In
others, it is effectively impossible (cf. the O'Reilly X Window System
series, which is mostly a rehash of the MIT dox, but is not copyable
unless you have a copy of the MIT dox to point to and say "they're
identical").

 > But the point is not here. The point is that the GPL grants a  
 > _transmission_ of freedom. The GPL considers that what is important  
 > is not the freedom of the individual programmer or distributor, but  
 > the freedom of the end user granted by the original authors. The GPL  
 > makes sure that there are no possible ways that and intermediate  
 > actor locks end-users in closed code.

But that's much more than "transmitting freedom".  Transmission of
freedom is what the Lesser GPL does.  The GPL exacts an unboundedly
large royalty in kind.

Note that I consider this extension of "transmission" to be a severe
infringement on my own freedom.  Specifically, I would like to be able
to alienate my personal GPL rights for certain kinds of software
(namely, games, video, and music, or more generally, anything I
wouldn't want to hack or hire somebody else to hack, and am not
competent to supervise work-for-hire).  Of course, I can't.

 >  From Wikipedia:
 > 
 > > In Marxist political economy,

I've discussed this with Stallman.[1]  He rejects the Marxian
interpretation, because in Marxian theory labor is property in a very
strong sense.  Stallman believes that software is socially
conditioned, and not property at all.  He considered (this was several
years ago) the Marxian position to be potentially dangerous, because
it leads to "empowerment" arguments of the kind espoused by many Open
Source advocates.

In fact, although I agree with Marx's general analysis of labor
alienation, I've long considered "software" to be the only nail the
coffin for his economic theories ever needed. :-)



Footnotes: 
[1]  Stallman is a democrat; he will talk at anybody.  Even me!