Am 02.03.2010 um 23:16 schrieb Greg Newby:
On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 08:16:13PM +0100, Marcello Perathoner wrote:
These don't seem like strongly conflicting statements. Our "no sweat of the brow how-to" gives a similar view.
IF someone were to gain illicit access to files at DP or elsewhere, regardless of whether they were public domain, various legal remedies could be applied. (Quite a few, and most countries have their own set of remedies ranging from contracts, to EULAs, to things like computer fraud & abuse or misappropriation of resources.)
But as Robert mentioned, that doesn't change that the public domain content is still public domain...no matter how much value has been added through scanning, OCR, proofreading, etc. What happens if such content mysterioulsy, untraceably extracts itself from DP and becomes available elsewhere? Well, it's still public domain. As I have mention in another post. In the public domain and copyrighted are to different animals. I can put source code of a program in the public domain and still maintain a copyright. The same goes for texts.
(Bonus reading assignment: Steven Levy's "Crypto," which describes how the PGP software, which was ineligible for export from the US, found its way into other countries -- where it was perfectly legal to use.)
-- Greg
PS: Over the years, I've been involved in various efforts to bring legal remedies to online incidents. It is very hard to do, especially when there is little or no money involved. Doubly-especially if any of the actors are in different countries. Robert's emphasis on technical measures, versus more legalistic ones, is more likely to give satisfaction. Thats what DRM is. Now, how can they be applied to texts. It can only be done in the file itself. The only way to reach this is with special format for the file that can only be read our own tools, and those tools source should not be publicly available. With most readers available one can still extract the text and their by defeating its protection. This has be done with music. Effectively defeating DRM and that is why iTunes music is now DRM free.
The saying still goes, if they is a will there is a way. regards Keith.