What Is Public Domain?

whitefox writes: "The Seattle Times has an interesting article in today's edition on what is public domain. After sharing the experience one software writer had with businesses and people shying away from BitTorrent because they didn't understand the concept of 'public domain,' they take the reader on a tour of how public domain is being defined by groups such as Creative Commons and to the battle of copyright-extensions in Eldred v. Ashcroft."

Comments

MPAA definition of public domain.

[www.sorehands.com]

Anything we want to use is public domain. Anything that that MPAA members make never become public domain.

I wonder when the studios have filed a copyright on a movie, did they list the works that it was based on? If not, maybe some of the movie copyrights can be invalidated -- don't you love irony?

It's hard to convince people

[Henry V .009]

I've been trying to convince the guy who owns the Chevrolet dealership across town that all his vehicles should be public domain, no go yet.

But seriously, copyright is a monopoly granted by the government in order to get people to spend the effort needed to create. Giving away copyrighted stuff to the public domain is charity. Simply charity. The entire free software system is built on the charity of a relatively few hardworking individuals. And while it's not problematic to make a living by leeching off of charity, it's damn hard to do it by provinding the stuff.

Re:ACs are fucking scum !

[(CLiT)sdem]

If you're looking for a good example of public domain, you need look no further than CmdrTaco's asshole.