[Upd-discuss] 3 minutes documentary on Public Domain

[Lars Aronsson]

sandor wrote:
>     If something is Intellectual Property - it is not in the Public
> Domain.
>     If something is in the Public Domain - it is not an entity's
> Intellectual Property.
>
>     Is one not a direct negation of the other?

It is true if you only discuss works that are already published. 

Many works are used even though they are unpublished, e.g. movie 
scripts, proprietary source code, or corporate internal documents, 
which are "protected" by non-disclosure agreements, employment 
contracts or "trade secrets", rather than copyright or patents.  
Whether a document should be published or not depends on what 
legal forms of publication are available to the creators.  PD 
might be useful to some cases, while copyright or patents will be 
preferred by others.  Most documents that are published under 
strong copyright would not be published in the public domain if 
copyright laws were removed.  They would not be published at all, 
and instead we would see Harry Potter novels with shrinkwrap 
non-disclosure agreements.  Contract law would flourish, not the 
public domain.

Closing the copyright door would not force such works out through 
the other door (public domain publishing).  Therefore, these two 
doors are not opposites.  The alternatives are other doors 
(contract law) or staying inside (not publishing at all).


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se