[Clipart] Copyleft, Public Domain, Copyright

[Schrijver]

Well I did not say that, it’s not my blog.

But as far as I know it’s really simple:

copyright is your right as the *author*

It’s attributed to you by default (by terms of the Berner Convention)

So if you release something under a copyleft license, or into the  
Public Domain, you still have copyright.

Meaning you could at some point make a new version, which you license  
differently.

Now, if you take public domain art work (which is free to use), and do  
your own thing with it, then your *modifications* to the original  
automatically have your copyright.

That means, that you can choose to reserve all rights to your version  
which uses public domain imagery.

That does not keep anyone from using the original imagery.

But if I’m not mistaken, that’s the difference between distributing  
something public domain, and distributing copyleft.

When distributing copyleft, you require adaptations to be released  
under the same licence as the original.

So, Public Domain is more similar to a MIT/X11 style license, and  
Copyleft is more similar to the GPL.

I am not a lawyer but this is my understanding?

E



Op 31 mrt 2009, om 09:45 heeft chovynz het volgende geschreven:

>
>
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 8:23 PM, Schrijver <eric at authoritism.net>  
> wrote:
> Firstly, everybody congratulations with the release!
> ...
>
> PS
> Apologies btw that regarding foss matters my focus is so erratic; I
> did not get back to these last things about copyright but I did read
> the other reactions, thanks all! In the specific case the guy did
> actually alter the license in retrospect, I later found out… http://www.roysac.com/blog/2008/08/copyleft-vs-public-domain.html
> Now, that specific case is not so interesting, but it is really
> interesting to read your reactions on the matter.
>
> I learned something. This concerns me somewhat.
> Did you just say public domain things CAN be copyrighted by someone?
> Public domain is not protected from being copyrighted?
> I read the blog.
>
> I think we might need a legal copyright lawyer to comment. Or maybe  
> just point me in the right direction if one has already answered  
> something like this.
>
> -- 
> Cheers
> Chovynz
> _______________________________________________
> clipart mailing list
> clipart at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/clipart

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/clipart/attachments/20090331/2cda9afe/attachment.html>