My understanding is that, by either law or custom, the United States government doesn't copyright anything that it publishes. I *know* this means that there is no U.S. copyright. I *think* this means that there is no copyright *period*.
On the one hand, all of the wikipedia sites are physically located here in the U.S. on servers owned by me and operated by me in the U.S. So U.S. law is what applies. If any other country gets mad at me for some reason, I don't suppose I care very much.
But on the other hand, the intention of the free licensing is that anyone who is somehow unhappy with the way a wikipedia is being run can take the content and reuse it in their own way -- and to make sure that they can do so easily, we should try to be sure that everything in the wikipedia system is as unencumbered as possible.
Rybo wrote:
Can you tell if this applies to foreigners as well?
mit freundlichen Gruessen Stefan
StefanRybo in Wikipedia apologies for any language errors (please correct)
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: wikipedia-l-admin@nupedia.com [mailto:wikipedia-l-admin@nupedia.com]Im Auftrag von Jimmy Wales Gesendet am: Montag, 2. Juli 2001 20:25 An: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Betreff: Re: [Wikipedia-l] State Department background notes
This is wonderful!
In general, nothing published by the U.S. government can be copyrighted. This is as it should be, of course. We paid for them to write it, after all.
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