5 ms·

I was curious if the printed book included mention of the GNU license so I "searched inside" on Amazon. These two paragraphs are pretty odd sitting next to eac

by timf 17y ago

I was curious if the printed book included mention of the GNU license so I "searched inside" on Amazon. These two paragraphs are pretty odd sitting next to each other: http://timfreeman.org/copyright_dip.png http://timfreeman.org/copyright_dip.png

bigiain 17y ago
I see the first paragraph as being "written permission" to "copy distribute and/or modify" the document under some quite specific conditions, and the second as reserving all other rights. But yeah, it _does_ look strange...
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- omouse 17y ago
  It also says "prior written permission"...maybe it's a joke because the permission is granted by the prior paragraph?
MarkPilgrim 17y ago
I complained about that, but it was too late to do anything about it. (You don't usually even see those frontmatter pages during the book-writing/editing/proofing process.)
- pageman 17y ago
  @Mark what should be the proper "text" - when I ask my students to copyright in the National Library - they insist on the Copyright "text" even though the Creative Commons "text" is also there.
- andreyf 17y ago
  Why complain? It's a little funny: the latter paragraph ends "... without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher", which, apparently, the former paragraph grants. No?
zck 17y ago
I'm not sure this is the case here, but it might be the difference between the actual text itself and the representation, arrangement, and style of the text as exhibited in the book. This happens in music, where a given Mozart concerto, for example, is in the public domain, but that doesn't mean you can photocopy a given sheet music of the concerto and hand it out; the notes themselves are in the public domain, but the particular typesetting of the specific document is not.
- mikedouglas 17y ago
  This was an issue recently with the Google Book Search deal. Even though the books were out of copyright or orphaned, Google owned the copyright to the scans, and would only give a non-transferable license back to the universities.
  - ig1 17y ago
    Scanning a public domain work doesn't give you copyright over it. See Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
    - 10ren 17y ago
      "...which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright because the copies lack originality." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_....
    - jerf 17y ago
      Google was probably giving a limited license on the collection copyright, which is much less protective than "normal" copyright. It's harder to google for that term than many other copyright terms, but here it is from the horse's mouth: http://www.sacred-texts.com/sect103.htm http://www.sacred-texts.com/sect103.htm Google does have a copyright on the collection as a whole, even as they do not gain any extra rights on the underlying public domain material. It's sort of weird, but it does make sense.
sp332 17y ago
It's obviously a dual-license :)

by timf 17y ago

bigiain 17y ago

I see the first paragraph as being "written permission" to "copy distribute and/or modify" the document under some quite specific conditions, and the second as reserving all other rights. But yeah, it _does_ look strange...

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
omouse 17y ago
It also says "prior written permission"...maybe it's a joke because the permission is granted by the prior paragraph?

MarkPilgrim 17y ago

I complained about that, but it was too late to do anything about it. (You don't usually even see those frontmatter pages during the book-writing/editing/proofing process.)

pageman 17y ago
@Mark what should be the proper "text" - when I ask my students to copyright in the National Library - they insist on the Copyright "text" even though the Creative Commons "text" is also there.
andreyf 17y ago
Why complain? It's a little funny: the latter paragraph ends "... without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher", which, apparently, the former paragraph grants. No?

zck 17y ago

I'm not sure this is the case here, but it might be the difference between the actual text itself and the representation, arrangement, and style of the text as exhibited in the book. This happens in music, where a given Mozart concerto, for example, is in the public domain, but that doesn't mean you can photocopy a given sheet music of the concerto and hand it out; the notes themselves are in the public domain, but the particular typesetting of the specific document is not.

mikedouglas 17y ago
This was an issue recently with the Google Book Search deal. Even though the books were out of copyright or orphaned, Google owned the copyright to the scans, and would only give a non-transferable license back to the universities.
- ig1 17y ago
  Scanning a public domain work doesn't give you copyright over it. See Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
  - 10ren 17y ago
    "...which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright because the copies lack originality." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_....
  - jerf 17y ago
    Google was probably giving a limited license on the collection copyright, which is much less protective than "normal" copyright. It's harder to google for that term than many other copyright terms, but here it is from the horse's mouth: http://www.sacred-texts.com/sect103.htm http://www.sacred-texts.com/sect103.htm Google does have a copyright on the collection as a whole, even as they do not gain any extra rights on the underlying public domain material. It's sort of weird, but it does make sense.

sp332 17y ago

It's obviously a dual-license :)