15 Apr
2014
15 Apr
'14
5:47 p.m.
On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 04:36:51PM -0600, Eric Smith wrote:
If it was produced by or for the government, and
isn't
classified, then they most likely have no lawful grounds for denying
distribution of it to you.
Am I wrong in remembering that IP produced by/for the US government is
automatically not copyrightable anyway? (Although it may still be classified,
as you say.) If that's true, then NASA not only can't withhold this stuff,
they can't even release it as open source, since the whole concept of
enforced open source depends on copyright (accepting all those rules is
a condition of being allowed to copy it in spite of the copyright which
would otherwise prevent that).. So it's either a big secret, or it's
full-on public domain, as in "cross out NASA's name and write in yours
and sell binaries for $100K a copy and no one will stop you -- except
for anyone who did the same thing but for $99K, etc. down to $0".
My understanding of the logic is that even the US government itself
admits it's obnoxiously unfair to seize tax money against our will, use it
to do whatever they want including creating IP, and then tell us we can't
have the IP because it belongs to them and not us. It's beyond me why this
applies only to copyrights and not other things like trademarks (NASA is
weirdly possessive about their logo, which seems equally obnoxious to me).
John Wilson
D Bit