| reply to DaneJasper
Re: to be fair said by DaneJasper:Here's a point. The Abu Ghrabe prison photos were taken by US soldiers - people on the payroll of the US goverment. I'd guess that makes their photos "work product", and that the government could try to assert some copyright. Considering that the "work product" of gov't employees, unles it involves something related to "national security", is actually public domain. Things like research produced from gov't grants, software even. That was one of Microsoft's complaints when one project was possibly going to be placed under GPL, because MS couldn't make use of it then. Technically, in that case, they did have a valid complaint, and in fact I support that particular instance.
There's a good reason why gov't documents, in the absence of pressing needs otherwise, are considered to be "public record", and can be looked up. It is for a similar reason that the laws themselves, cannot be copyrighted. There was a hubbub about that some time ago too, because part of the text of a proposed law was derived from something that an independent contractor worked on, and attempted to claim rights on, and some well-meaning but mis-informed lawmaker wanted to copyright that part. Sheer madness and folly, I tell you. At least in the US, we are a nation of public, written law. How can you be held to rules, that you are not allowed to read? Also, it has to be remembered, that copyright is not an inherent right, it is a granted right by the gov't, to, in the end, foster the enrichement of the public domain. Ironic, isn't it, when you see the public posturing about copyright and copyright-extension issues made by large corporate media companies who's only interest is profit. |
