Copyright of Independent Creation

["Michael S. Hart" <hart@prairienet.org>]

I have discussed this with our legal advisors,
who are both lawyers, law professors, and heads
of their university law libraries and I stand by
my original statement that the works produced by
Project Gutenberg would NOT be covered by two
independent copyrights if two people claimed to
have independently produced them, and no one
could prove otherwise. . .the mathematical odds
alone would eliminate such consideration even
if the old copyrights were still in force.
[Most of the works of Project Gutenberg are
in the public domain, but not all.]

I don't know about something very short,
such as "The Fog" by Carl Sandburg, but
in our universe of Etexts, no one is going
to get a new copyright for anything a long
as our average Etext.

 
Thanks for your patience while researching,

Michael


=============================================

Michael S. Hart, Professor of Electronic Text
Benedictine University [Illinois Benedictine]
Carnegie Mellon University Visiting Scientist

Executive Director of Project Gutenberg Etext
Post Office Box 2782, Champaign IL 61825-3231 
No official connection to U of Illinois--UIUC
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