* Hendrik Weimer <hend...@enyo.de> [090120 19:13]:
> I just asked someone working on international copyright law. The key
> point is that you always have to apply the law of the country where
> you want to distribute the work (principle of national treatment,
> "Schutzlandprinzip" in German). So, while there is no copyright on
> NASA images in the US, it is still protected by the respective laws in
> any country that has signed the Berne convention or a similar
> international treaty.
> I am not sure whether this makes it non-free, though. The DSFG do not
> mention that the rules have to apply worldwide. Also, the GPLv2
> explicitely allows geographical limitations.
While I also see no specific problem with some countries having problems
with specific software, this looks like US government made works miss
permissions even to copy and distribute in practically everywhere
outside the USA. (After all, Debian has mirrors in many countries and
there are people selling the CDs and DVDs everywhere).
If this is the case, then I guess we have quite an big problem, as I
guess such code and especially data is to be found in quite a large
amount of places.
I guess the problem gets even bigger as people consider them public
domain so do not properly record the author. (And the question who is
the copyright holder might even be quite complex. I'd guess most
juristictions consider it to be an equivalent of work for hire, so
the copyright outside the US might actually be in the hands of some
organisational unit of the USA).
On the other hand, waiting till someone sues will not make the situation
much easier (though if it really is only one copyright holder for
everything, it could wait until it gets profiable...)
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
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