4 ms·

I'm not sure he was talking about copyright -- if I scan (or manually reproduce) something in the public domain, I of course own that copy and can do with it as

• maxharris 14y ago
  I just can't go and prevent other people from copying my copy. What about digital restoration, which often includes reconstruction of missing parts of the document? What if you do significant work to uncover a document hidden within a layer, as is the case with the Archimedes Palimpsest? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest) I'm not making the argument that such images ought never to be available freely to the public. All I'm saying is that the terms of release ought to be up to the individual or institution that's doing the work, and that it's the government's job to protect that right.
• sethish 14y ago
  Yes and no. You may take whatever technological steps you want to restrict someone's ability to copy the work. But you can't use copyright via the legal system to stop copying.