Drop of portindex

[Erik Trulsson]

On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 06:14:35PM +0200, Max Laier wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 September 2004 06:20, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 14, 2004 at 02:16:22PM +1000, Rob B wrote:
> > > I would say, from reading the pr, and the fact that there is no licence
> > > specified, that the author has released it into the public domain - as
> > > well as  relinquishing copyright.  Since the licence on this version has
> > > either been changed or not specified, anyone could possibly pick up the
> > > project.
> >
> > No, that's not how it works.  If no rights are granted to you by the
> > author, you have no rights to his property, including the right to
> > redistribute.
> 
> I am no lawyer, but it seems to me that fair use applies and (every) former 
> user of this work is allowed to (at least) create a derivative work and 
> release it (under own copyright) to the public as the original work is "out 
> of print or otherwise unavailable".

Fair use doesn't allow you to do that.  Fair use essentially only
allows you to quote small parts of a copyrighted work for certain
purposes, and possibly to make a copy for your own personal use
(altough recent changes copyright law (like the infamous DMCA) might
even disallow that nowdays.)
You are certainly not allowed to distribute copies of a copyrighted
work without the copyright-holders permission. (And derivative works
also fall under the original authors copyright, so you can't distribute
those either.)
That the original work is "out of print or otherwise unavailable" is
irrelevant.

-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013 at student.uu.se