Re: [Fsfe-uk] [OT-ish] Government food data

[Stuart Yeates]

Alex Hudson wrote:

>>My understanding is that stuff produced by the Federal government is 
>>automatically public domain.
> 
> I know it's not subject to US copyright, but I don't know about whether
> or not that counts for other countries. There isn't a global 'public
> domain', copyright is a national issue (subject to the whims of Berne,
> obviously). I'm guessing since Berne 'only' requires you to recognise
> foreign copyrights, that it probably is essentially copyright free, but
> I don't know - database rights are kind of new and all.

It's not subject to _additional_ copyright.

If it includes material that was previously copyright, then those
parts remain copyright by their original authors. Thus you end up in
situations such as:

http://www.nyfairuse.org/law_is_copyrighted.xhtml

in which the copyright of the law is privately held.

cheers
stuart
-- 
Stuart Yeates                          address@hidden
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