Re: [h2o-discuss] Re: Electronic publishing

[John Kwasnik <jkwasnik@jps.net>]

 [From "Jon Garfunkel" <garf@look.boston.ma.us>:]

>Come to think of it, another key point of publishing is that you can get a
>person/company to notarize that you wrote a manuscript at a certain point in
>time. I assume Fatbrain can do this now. 

        This could also be really relevant far in the future, in determining
when the work falls into the public domain.

        I was discussing just this with other folk/traditional music freaks.
There is the question of what qualifies as "public domain".  We have (more
than we need) resources that advocate for what content is copyrighted:  the
original authors, their assignees, their publishers, their rights agents,
etc.  And most intellectual property suits are between parties who both
claim the rights to a particular content.  But who is advocating for the
Public Domain?  As of this writing, we don't have court-appointed Public
Domain Defenders in the U.S.

        So folks brought up that the only CLEAR proof, at least concerning
music, would be to show that the work in question was published at some time
that makes it clearly public domain (presuming that the published copy will
be accepted as authentic).

        So Fatbrain could help here ... but you would have to rely on
someone archiving its content, in the event they go out of business before
the 22nd century.

                                                 John