OSI enforcement?

[Philippe Verdy]

Matthew Flaschen [mailto:matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu]
> > it's impossible to prove "prior art" with
> > content published in the public domain without the signature secured by
> the
> > copyright notice).
> 
> Proving date of publication does not require a copyright notice.

Yes, but this highly depend on the way the publication is made. On
intrinsicly unsecure electronic networks like Internet, creating a proof of
existence from it when this is the only place of publication is difficult if
the publication does not include a verifiable signature that authenticate
the author and the effective date of publication. It's much easier with
books due to the existence of signed contracts between the author and
publisher, and the material existence of the publication which also gets
deposited within official records (like ISBN and ISSN deposits).

I note that some open source or free softwares are also published with an
ISSN number in a printed form. Some websites will also create their own
deposit archived somewhere as future proofs of existence of their content.
This is however a minority of sites.

What Google or others are collecting from the web, does not constitute a
proof because the archiving is done without a publicly reviewable method:
the archive is not certifiable, and the way they collect the data uses
unsecured connections that cannot authenticate who was really publishing the
content.