Hi Leigh and Steve, This is a very pertinent, albeit somewhat complex discussion. I too am not a lawyer -- so this is my interpretation of copyright protection in NZ.
In terms of NZ's copyright protection, the bundle of exclusive rights conferred by the NZ copyright act includes the rights of the copyright holder in "authorising any other person to do any of the restricted activities" (i.e derivative works, performing the work, selling etc.) Consequently a legitimate author may declare a work to be in the public domain, thus effectively removing the traditional restrictions associated with copyright. Copyright protection in NZ does recognise the concept of "public domain" in the sense of the period of copyright protection, namely that when the copyright expires, the work falls into the public domain. Do take a look at the NZ Ministry of Economic Development's summary of copyright protection in New Zealand. http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/Page____7290.aspx Therefore my interpretation is that a NZ copyright holder may declare a work to be in the public domain. Hope this helps. I'll see if I can get one or two of my lawyer contacts in NZ to provide us with a "free" interpretation. Cheers Wayne On Fri, 2008-07-04 at 09:01 +1200, Leigh Blackall wrote: > Hi Steve, > > > I'm admittedly not a lawyer, but my understanding is that > doesn't have > to be ported. > > > And its a great thing you're not a lawyer, nor am I, and I don't think > this topic should need one either... > > The thing I was trying to point out about Public Domain is that it is > difficult for people outside the US to contribute works to PD if their > country does not have something like PD. Increasingly it seems, the > Public of the United States is the Public for us all... and so of > course, we all go ahead and give it to the PD as a matter of > principle, and if we're loading works to US based projects like > Archive.org, then I suppose we are giving our work to the US Public in > the good faith. As far as I know, New Zealand, Australia and Canada do > not have something called a Public Domain for their jurisdictions, and > so PD is essentially a US collection... not to mention copyright these > days is essentially a US (and its coalitions of the willing) thingy, > spreading through US trade "negotiations" to protect US cultural > products. Someday, the US will simply mean us. > > > On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 7:36 AM, Randy Fisher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > Hi Steve, > > I think that Nadia has raised an important point about the > distinction between what the policy says; and what are the > appropriate actions. Clearly, we have to do a better job of > explaining things.For the Newbie, alot of this is hard to > understand. > > When people are looking at supplying their materials, unless > they are open source values to begin with it's a hard sell. > When folks spend time in the community (and are open source) > and then they learn about our collective mission to create > free and open education + all of the wonderful things we've > got going - including wiki-to-pdf; collaborative video editing > and wiki-publishing, then the reasoning behind CC-BY-SA makes > eminent sense. > > - Randy > > > > > On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 12:21 PM, Steve Foerster > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Randy wrote: > > << Is there an FAQ about these specific questions, or > shall we create > one? >> > > > > Well, there's this: > > http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Licensing_Policy > > That's not a FAQ, that's a start of a policy that I > put together a > while back. At this point, though I think completion > will have to > wait for the WE Council to be elected. > > -=Steve=- > > > > > > > > > -- > > ________________ > Randy Fisher - Facilitating Change, Connections and > Collaboration to Improve Performance. > * Engaging People in Teams, Communities and > Organizations....and WikiEducator! > > + 1 604.684.2275 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > http://www.wikieducator.org > http://www.wikieductator.org/Community_Media > http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Randyfisher > > > Skype: wikirandy > > -- -- Leigh Blackall +64(0)21736539 skype - leigh_blackall SL - Leroy Goalpost http://learnonline.wordpress.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
