Carcharoth wrote:
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 2:46 AM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
If the author who is placing their material PD, not by age, doesn't like what people do with it, they shouldn't have made it PD. I mean you can't give away your cake and then claim that it shouldn't be eaten.
Agreed. But is it the whole text, parts of the texts, the ideas expressed in the text, the original wording and structure of the text, that are PD, or only some of those? Obviously, if a PD text quotes a copyrighted text, there are still restrictions on how that can be used or re-used. And if you were quoting from the main text of a PD text, you would still put the quote of PD text in quotation marks. Or would you?
How would you make a decision on whether to paraphrase, summarise, or quote verbatim, all or part of the PD text, and in which cases would you not use quotation marks to offset what you are quoting or republishing, from the rest of your work?
One does better by trying not to conflate copyright infringement with plagiarism. They are distinct offences either of which can exist independently of the other. One gives credit to one's sources with or without quotation marks depending on whether one is repeating the original words or paraphrasing them. It's as simple as that. If a PD text quotes or otherwise uses a copyright text why would you have restrictions? This is what fair use exists in the first place. If one's quoted source itself quotes another text then one just uses a second level of quotation. I really don't see a problem here.
Ec