minstrel: Re: minstrel-digest V1 #412

[Elizabeth Naime]

> National Poetry Day was October 9, 1997.  (In the United Kingdom, that 
> is.)  Wendy Cope was commissioned to write a poem on copyright, and has 
> waived the copyright on the following poem for a year for dissemination 
> purposes.  Please feel free to spread the message as you like.  (There is 

Hmmm, does British or International copyright law consider this "waiving"?
I thought in these cases the author was advised to keep the copyright, but
place a formal statement that the work may be freely copied under
thus-and-such conditions (here, until 10/9/98 and only in its entireity as
written with proper attribution, as I read it).  Fine point, but, without
the copyright, the author has no further say as to how it is used -- if
you want to release a work for others to quote and copy for free, you
DON'T want to release it into the public domain;  you want to copyright it
and then make a statement as to who may use it under what conditions.

I really like the poem, too.  If I get a web page going I'll have to ask
if I can post it there!  It is so easy to head for the photocopy machine,
and, so hard to explain why copyright should be respected.  Thanks, Wendy
Cope!

I also like the jungle-book meter!

Elspeth the ill-named



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