Public Domain and liability

[Brice, Richard]

It is my understanding that State government is not bound by the same
"public domain" requirements as the Federal government in 17 USC 105. That
is, because States are not explicitly included in the exclusions of who can
hold copyrights, States have the right to copyright their works.

Given that, what are your thoughts on States using an open source license on
software they develop?

	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M. [SMTP:rod at cyberspaces.org]
	Sent:	Monday, August 07, 2000 8:27 PM
	To:	John Cowan
	Cc:	bcretney at postmark.net; License Discuss
	Subject:	RE: Public Domain and liability

	Good point, John. I was thinking more in terms of works being
"released to
	the public domain" by expiration of copyright or some other
operation of
	law. You are exactly correct. The federal government cannot claim
copyright
	to its own works so those works are public domain works at their
inception
	under copyright law (one caution: a patent may be obtained).

	As a practical matter and aside from military or national security
uses, the
	Federal government acts as a market player (rather than a software
	developer) so the vast majority of software programs used by or
created for
	the Federal government are works licensed to the government from
private
	sector sources and university research. Of course, these works
usually do
	not by operation of law immediately become public domain works.

	Rod

	> -----Original Message-----
	> From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan at locke.ccil.org]
	> Sent: Monday, August 07, 2000 7:58 PM
	> To: Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.
	> Cc: bcretney at postmark.net; License Discuss
	> Subject: RE: Public Domain and liability
	>
	>
	> On Mon, 7 Aug 2000, Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M. wrote:
	>
	> > Strictly speaking, this discussion is theoretical since I know
	> of no public
	> > domain works that are software programs. (This is not to say
	> that  there is
	> > not any source code in the public domain).
	>
	> Software programs written by U.S. government employees
	> within the scope of their employment are surely in the public
domain.
	> For example, see the software programs linked to
	> http://mapping.usgs.gov/www/products/software.html .
	> As a specific example,
	> http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/pub/tools/misc/reform.c
	> is the source code for a public-domain program (though not
explicitly
	> dedicated to the public domain within the code itself).
	>
	> --
	> John Cowan                                   cowan at ccil.org
	> C'est la` pourtant que se livre le sens du dire, de ce que, s'y
conjuguant
	> le nyania qui bruit des sexes en compagnie, il supplee a ce
qu'entre eux,
	> de rapport nyait pas.               -- Jacques Lacan, "L'Etourdit"
	>
	>
	>