Joseph:
Please, please, please! "Free Speech" relates to political speech, the ability to express different ideas and in different ways. It does not mean we can or should be able to say or write or do whatever we like, and that any moral or legal restrictions on our expression are evil or Non-Free.
Public Domain works are works we can all freely copy (I'm considering King Lear), share, and base new, derivative works upon. They are not works which we can (there goes King Lear) republish or recycle and claim origination of.
However, enough of this debate/discussion. How about them Cubbies?
Michael R. Graham
-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Pietro Riolo [mailto:riolo[_at_]voicenet.com]
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 10:44 AM
To: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
Subject: [CNI-(C)] Re: Attribution is not required in public
domainmaterials
On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Robert F. Bodi <lawlists[_at_]bodi.com> wrote:
>
> I fail to see how a requirement to attribute a work to its author
> violates anybody's free speech, any more than the requirement that one
> identify oneself to a police officer does. You take the right of free
> speech too far if you give others the right to plagerize. And note
> that plagiarism does NOT require an existing copyright. One can
> plagerize from the public domain.
You are wandering into a totally different territory when you try to make an analogy between requirement of attribution and requirement to reveal one's name to a police officer. We have laws on libel, slander, forgery, and perjury. None of them has any affect on the freedoms of speech and press because they are very limited in term of scope and time and focus on the consequences of the deceitful actions, not the deceitful actions itself.
Later in your post, you said that ideas are not protected and therefore, they do not require attribution. But, plagiarism is not limited to fixed copyrightable expressions but also extend to all ideas. In a way, the free speech allows one to plagiarize by copying ides from other sources without attribution.
> If they take a substantial amount of the text, then YES. Copyright
has
> nothing at all to do with it. The issue is that one should recognize
> the sources of one's ideas when those sources are known. That not
> only is fair and ethical, but it BROADENS the practice of free speech
> because it allows others to investigate further. The advancement of
> knowledge is not furthered by hiding the sources of one's works.
> Quite the opposite is true. By listing sources, one helps others check
> and improve one's works.
You are mixing ethics with legality. Is copyright infringement the same as stealing?
> The issue isn't necessarily one of lawsuits. The concept does not
> need to be legally enforced, but it should be ethically enforced. For
> example, historians that have "borrowed" from others without
> attribution and subsequently have been outed aren't necessarily sued,
> but their works become suspect, as well they should. Thus, there is
> peer pressure to attribute the works of others. Self-policing can
> work. The problem is that you appear to be saying that it is PROPER
> to not attribute. That I cannot agree with. A student who turns in a
> paper copied from a Shakespeare play should get a failing grade if
> proper attribution is not given. That is the proper response.
Again, you are mixing ethics with legality. Note that I said in other post that attribution is nice but it should be always optional, meaning that not providing attribution should not be made illegal.
> "Ideas" are not protected. I serously doubt that she copied, verbatin
> or even closely, the works of an identifiable other person. Hence, no
> attribution is necessary. You are distorting the issue of when
> attribution is needed.
The following are also not protected:
By your logic, if I copy any from category #4, I do not need to provide attribution because they are not protected. This contradicts your previous statement saying that copying a large portion of a public domain material must have a proper attribution.
> > We must not let authors gain perpetual copyright through the guise
> > of trademark.
>
> Nobody suggested this be done.
Your post seems to say otherwise.
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: 5,681
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain.
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