What is a copyright

[cartrite]

Hi All,
MMM, I don't quite understand why there is a section for "valid" copyrights on the upload form from the motherload. At first glance it would seem to be required. After I uploaded an addon recently, I noticed that other creators have copyrights (license) ranging from unknown to a few sentences expressing thier will on how thier textures should be used.

When I looked it up on the internet, I found that a valid copyright contains basicly 3 things.
1. The word copyright or the symbol. The symbol is a circle with the letter C inside. Since it is impossible to represent this symbol with computers, The (C) is accepted.
2. The date the object or material was created.
3. The name of the creator.
Thats IT. If those 3 items are present you have a valid copyright.
I looked thru some (not all) of the motherload and did not see any copyrights or licenses with these 3 requirements.
Any how the main question is what can be copyrighted?
Planet or Nebula/Galaxy textures are generally copies of original data provided by NASA or some other space agency.
Unless I'm missing something or there are unkown people in this world sending up spacecraft to other worlds taking images, most images available are provided by either NASA, EuroSpaceAgency,Russia, or some other goverment. Anyhow can a person just take these images and modify them somehow and claim that they now belong (copyrighted) to them?I suppose there are some images of the Earth taken by private sattlites. And others taken by telecopes. These images are without question the property of the persons or owners of the equipment involved.

I tried to change the license or copyright of the addon I uploaded to the motherload last week to NOT include the textures because of my confusion. I also modified the long description to include credits. As of this moment it has not been changed yet.

Well unfortunatly, It will be at least a week before I see an answer to this. I'm going out of town on assignment and will probally have no access to a computer. Even when I get back home I still have limited access because my main computer is dead. Fried. I'm using my old P1 200mhz system which gives me limited internet access but little else. It will probally be some time before I find the time to get another computer and set it up. Work is getting very busy and is involving a lot of travel. So,

Later

Cartrite

[selden]

A copyright is the right to copy something.
When you create anything new, only you have the right to make copies of it or to allow someone else to copy it. International treaties guarantee this. International treaties have the force of law in the countries that sign them.

U.S. law states that only objects which are "fixed in a tangible medium" can be copyrighted. Magnetic domains on a disk have been determined to constitute a tangible medium. By itself, information cannot be copyrighted, only its representation can. Major lawsuits have been fought over what this means, over the publication of phone books, for example.

The copyright symbol and related information are not required, but do help to clarify the status of of a thing's copyright, especially in a court of law. Other evidence is relevant, too, since anyone can stick a copyright statement on something, whether or not it's true.

You can reassign the copyright to someone else.

The copyright holder can create a license that determines how others may use that creation.

Things placed in the public domain don't belong to anyone. Everyone can copy or modify them.

Images created entirely by NASA are placed in the public domain because NASA is a U.S. government agency. My understanding is that U.S. law states that things created using our tax money belong to all of us.

Things created by agencies of other governments might *not* be in the public domain. The laws applying to them are different. Some countries don't even have the concept of public domain. You must verify the actual status of all of the copyrights and licenses associated with a thing. You cannot assume that something is in the public domain.

Copyright gets complicated when you modify a thing originally created by someone else. The modifications may or may not belong to the person to did them.

If you modify something that was in the public domain, then the results belong to you. If you modify something that was *not* in the public domain, then the license granted to you by the copyright holder is what determines what you can do with the results and who the results belong to.

Too many people ignore all of this because it's complicated and because it restricts what they want to do. Unfortunately, wishful thinking won't change the laws that apply.

Unfortunately, of such things flamewars are born.

I'm locking this thread.