Re: Option 3

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 2:36 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen@rosenlaw.com> wrote:
>> The fact that W3C claims a copyright on the document does add a whole
>> lot of explicit restrictions though, right? Specifically, it adds
>> basically limits all forms of copying except the ones afforded by fair
>> use.
>
> Since when is the presence of a copyright notice the only proof needed that
> some aspects of a work are actually copyrightable or copyrighted?

My understanding is that this has always been the case. All you need
to do to claim copyright on a work that you have created is to add a
copyright notice on it.

> If that
> were true, I'd copyright Shakespeare's plays and all of Linux in the blink
> of an eye.

That would be illegal as I understand it. You can only claim copyright
on works that you actually have created. That doesn't seem to be a
problem here though since these works have copyright notices added to
them by the people that created them.

> Enough from me!  Ask your own lawyer!  She charges less per hour for free
> advice than I do. And her advice is probably more reliable for your
> particular use case.

That I can totally understand. However I hope you don't mind that the
rest of us continue discussing this as it is an important problem that
needs to be addressed if W3C wishes for spec authors to use the W3C
license exclusively.

/ Jonas

Received on Wednesday, 23 March 2011 21:50:48 UTC