4 ms·

ELI5 please?

• stevetrewick 10y ago
  As with most such official documents [0] a UK birth certificate bears a Crown Copyright [1] imprimatur. Therefore, the thinking goes, your actual name is owned by the state and not you. Therefore using it is a fraud, therefore you don't need to pay bills/debts/fines etc, because mumble mumble reasons. It's a tradition or an old charter or something. [0] And OS maps and geodata. [1] http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/re-using-public-sector-information/copyright-and-re-use/crown-copyright/ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/re...
  • toast0 10y ago
    I'm not familiar with UK copyright; in the US, factual information is not copyrightable -- if a birth certificate is copyrighted, you would not be permitted to photocopy it, but you could use all of the information. Additionally, works of the US government have no copyright; birth certificates are issued by counties or states, though (a passport is a work of the US government, so those are public domain)
    • Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
      UK copyright is different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
    • roywiggins 10y ago
      Crown Copyright is a thing in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright