Re: Public Domain

On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Kathy Tadlock <Kathy.Tadlock[_at_]wwu.edu> wrote:

>

No to the first question. Copying a public domain material to an electronic version with no or little modification does not abrogate the public domain status in both original material and electronic version. What is usually done is that some items are added to the electronic version such as artistic background or heading. Only these added items can be copyrighted but in no way, these can affect the public domain status in the original expressions.

The answer to your second question is yes. This has been that way since the beginning of history. That is because of the universal physical law. In this society, we divide objects into two different groups: tangible things and intangible things. However, intangible things relies on tangible things for existence. For example, you cannot have a story without your body including your brain. You cannot tell a story unless you have the tangible means to do that such as mouth and hands. You cannot pass a story to other people in far places unless you have ink, paper, and tangible means to transport books such as car or truck.

It is only natural that you can have control over access to the tangible things. For example, you have control over access to your dairy. You can decide who can read your dairy and you can decide who can borrow it.

However, if you want to have control over intangible things that exist in tangible things, you will have to do more than mere control over tangible things. If you do not want people to tell others what they see in your dairy, you will have to get them to agree to your terms and conditions through oral or written agreement.

That is how people and entities (such as libraries, museums, etc.) can gain control over intangible things through the control over tangible things, thereby preventing the public domain status from being perfected.

Are they doing the right thing? That is an ethical question. From my personal view, what they do is a big insult to the freedom of knowledge. How can these libraries, museums, and other repositories dare to impose conditions on the access to the public domain intangible things?

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>
http://www.boycottcopyright.com

Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 5,679

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain. Received on Mon Jun 16 2003 - 18:51:31 GMT