On Jun 10, 2004, at 10:15 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Copyright doesn't need to be registered, for one thing.
A couple of questions for the people who know more about copyright history than I do, which might help clear this up. Can computer languages be put under copyright?
Is the issue that Klingon is a trademark of Paramount relevent? i.e., even if the language and syntax is not owned by Paramount, can we call an encyclopedia "Klingon" without their permission?
One thing I do think is important to reject is the notion of asking Paramount for permission/doing it with the knowledge that they won't complain. A Klingon Wikipedia would not simply be an online encyclopedia in Klingon - it would be a free encyclopedia in Klingon. We risk doing a lot of harm to the free software/copyleft movement if we take a misstep here. If we're not 100% certain that Klingon is not under copyright, I think we're better served to not play with fire here.
Note that this is not a comment on the value of a Klingon encyclopedia. It's a comment on the ambiguity of whether or not a Klingon encyclopedia can be a part of a copyleft/free encyclopedia project. And a reminder that, with the wolves at the door of copyleft in terms of things like SCO and Ken Brown's book on Linux, it's probably best to be cautious about things like this.
-Snowspinn er
That's an alarmist position and copyright paranoia. It's also defeatist. You want to collapse immediately even if they are wrong. The first step that they would need to take is to issue a take-down order, and they haven't done that. After that, in the absence of proper registration on their part (and what that means for an entire language remains to be determined) their damages would be limited to a recovery of any profits we may have made through a copyright violation. ( O:-) )
Since you seem to be arguing on behalf of Paramount, what legal citations are you using to back your position.
This copyright issue is far more important than the status of the Klingon language, so please stop using it as an excuse for blocking Klingon.