Michael Lustfield wrote: > NIST is US government, yeah? That's one of the exceptions where almost > everything released is into public domain.
That's not really true: "public domain" is not an accurate way to summarize the situation. Andrew got a subtle detail right in his mail mid:[email protected] > It remains feasible for the US government to assert copyright on this for > anywhere elsewhere in the world. In other words, US government works can be treated "as if" they are public domain when shared or modified inside the United States, but the US government reserves the right to restrict or bar doing such outside the United States. Like with any copyright holder, though, "it doesn't hurt to ask": many creators of government works have probably not given such careful consideration. Agencies have the authority to make the terms more permissive, and if they agree to unlimited redistribution and modification, then that's terrific. You were right to say with respect to federal works that "_almost_ everything" is released under those terms. However NIST is one of the very few special exceptions: presumably because of their role in research and development in alliance with the private sector, they are granted a special exception that gives them full latitude to set copyright terms as they see fit: https://www.cendi.gov/pdf/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.pdf#page=16 This is why, for example, NIST prohibits public mirroring of its Digital Library of Mathematical Functions publication: https://dlmf.nist.gov/about/notices#S1 [The predecessor to the DLMF, a book known for its authors "Abramowitz and Stegun", was published by NIST's predecessor, the National Bureau of Standards, which did not have this power to set more restrictive copyright terms. That's one reason why that old book continues to be used as a reference in scientific works despite the DLMF being its successor and being based on it.]
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