🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1225@racerx.bridge.COM> ken@Bridge.COM writes:
>I'm confused about the legal status of the Hershey fonts.  

>How can _any_ restrictions be applied to something in the public
>domain?

See below for inalienable rights. But apart from that, the rights that
pertain to derivative works may apply. They are not always obvious.

Put the PD works into a collection. That collection is *not* PD,
although the parts of it is.

Edit a PD work, say Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels'. That edition is
copyright, although the original isn't.

Translate a work. The translation is not PD.

(What the terms collecting, editing and translating mean in regard
 to computer data is a question for an expert.)

>copyRIGHT.  If, on the other hand, he puts the work into the public
>domain, he can maintain _no_ rights to it, for it no longer belongs to
>him but rather to the PUBLIC.  (Courtesy does not enter into the legal
>questions presented here.)

In general, some rights cannot be given away.  You can't give away the
right to be acknowledged the author of the work, you can't give away
the right to refuse changes that affect your reputation, and things
like that.  At least as stated in the Berne Convention -- don't know
if US national law thinks otherwise.

Placing a work in the public domain gives away the right to copy and
distribute the work.

It's also a question of what exactly a 'work' is. A single version, or
all of them? I don't know about this.

I'm not very up-to-date on the Hershey font's -- there may be more
than one version here.

>1)  Given the conflicting statements in the above quote, are the subject
>    fonts in the public domain, or are they not?

I do recall a discussion on the same topic in the TeX groups some
years back, and it was a bit confusing. I got the impression that the
fonts distributed in the NTIS format was restricted. Translate them
into TeX .PK format, and you could distribute them freely. But I may
remember wrong. However, the parts of the README file that you quote
seem to say much the same thing.

Better ask someone at NTIS. If you are very concerned about not
infringing their copyright, you really need to get their opinion.

-- 
Anders Thulin        ath@linkoping.trab.se        013-23 55 32
Telia Research AB, Teknikringen 2B, S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden