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Re: [ox-en] Re: [p2p-research] arguments against applying open/free to other content



Hi Sam,

Samuel Rose wrote:
I do agree with him that it's useful to declare a license of some form up
front, as the creator of a work. I have actually run across people recently
who have released creative works, and have declared no license, which means
that others can come along and use the legal system to enclose their works
that they intended to be "public domain" later.

This was the case with
http://opensourcemachine.org/mm2html2/How_to_build_a_multimachine.html

I spoke with the inventor of this machine, Pat Delany, on the phone a few
months ago. It turned out that he is a Texas oil industry retiree who is in
his 70's, and he intended to release this machine into the public domain,
but didn't really know too much about "licensing" in this way.

This happens with lots of people working on the realm of open hardware, who
explicitly *do not* want to patent or enclose, but do not know where to
start.

Hm, I don't quite understand. Any text or content released in the public
domain should forever remain so, even if others can claim copyright for
_derived works_ (but not for the text itself).

And concerning patents for machines, tools, and such, they should be
impossible get once a description of the thing has been _published_ (though,
of course, in practice it might be difficult to prove that you already _had_
published your description).

And, of course, if you just publishing a text without declaring it covered
by a license oder public domain, it will be copyrighted in the usual way,
leaving others very limited rights.

So, if there really was an example of enclose-by-others, could you explain
how it occurred?

Thanks
	Christian

-- 
|-------- Dr. Christian Siefkes --------- christian siefkes.net ---------
| Homepage: http://www.siefkes.net/    |    Blog: http://www.keimform.de/
| Peer Production in the Physical World:       http://www.peerconomy.org/
|------------------------------------------ OpenPGP Key ID: 0x346452D8 --
It's hard for me to worry about the studios losing money. [...] When you
look at one of their accounting sheets you realise you're never going to
see a penny, so if someone wants to rip them off that's fine with me. If
you're going to pirate, though, make sure the quality's good. Have some
respect for what you're pirating!
        -- Terry Gilliam



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