Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Mark Wagner wrote:
On 7/21/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Wait a second, are we talking about copyright infringement, plagiarism, or legal use of non-free content? These are three separate problems. I thought the original post was talking about copyright infringement, but this new post talks about "taking somebody else's writing and passing it off as their own".
Most people don't distinguish between "plagiarism" and "copyright infringement" when it comes to writing: the school system is very effective at training people that simply copying the contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica isn't an acceptable way of writing a report, which is why we don't get very many instances of copyright violations with text.
Using the work of a PD author without credit would still be plagiarism, but not copyvio.
As I understand it, under French (and possibly also German) law a content creator has "moral rights" (ie. right to attribution) even after copyright expires, which are (somehow) part of the copyright law.
Yes, there's even a loosely worded section about this in the US copyright law. Neverthelesss, the actual term "copyright" is defined separately. The confusion is understandable, but complying with the moral rights should be a lot easier. It's good scholarship even for those works which have no protection at all.
Ec