[LEAPSECS] private smear goes public

[Warner Losh]

I strongly urge that they get a lawyer to do write / bless something
like CC0 rather than going to the internet to get a suggestion. This
is scientific data, and the CC0 was done for that. However, I can't
say this enough: they need a lawyer that's an expert on whatever kind
of quazi-governmental agency IERS is, since the rules for them are
'special' and ever changing. In the US, it used to be the case that
all works commissioned by the government were in the public domain.
That's changed in subtle and technical ways and you need to be an
expert to know how to do things. And you need to know what you can or
can't put into the public domain based on whatever contract it may
have been produced for. All these details about the IERS are, at best,
murky and they really really really should get a lawyer that knows the
ins and outs of the laws governing thing that setup of the IERS.

Oh, and did I mention they should get competent legal advise.

Warner

On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 4:44 PM, Michael Wouters
<michaeljwouters at gmail.com> wrote:
> According to this email,
>
> http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2016-February/023209.html
>
> the IERS will be adding a copyright notice allowing free use of the
> leap second list.
>
> Guess we just have to wait for the next one.
>
> Cheers
> Michael
>
> On Sat, Dec 3, 2016 at 9:38 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
>> --------
>> In message <CANCZdfrLh8gRJohhLOg_XG7i=qwxX5nNMhk0w3fs7ZfPO5Y3oA at mail.gmail.com>, Warner Losh writes:
>>
>>>It's also all boilerplate. There's no creative content, so it's quite
>>>likely it wouldn't even qualify for copyright protection. You can't
>>>copyright facts, and that's all that differs from report to report.
>>
>> That is actually an interesting detail.
>>
>> The existence or non-existence of a leap second only becomes 'a
>> fact' as a result of the writing of the bulletin by the director
>> of the IERS.
>>
>> Anybody can write a Bulletin-C with/without all the boiler-plate,
>> but that wont create or prevent the creation of a leap-second from
>> being created.
>>
>> It is therefore not at all clear that Bulletin-C contains facts,
>> as much as it creates facts.   As such it is probably much closer
>> related to instruments of finance, which routinely create facts
>> (financial obligations) on creation.  The canonical example: Writing
>> a cheque.
>>
>> Either way, I don't think that matters for copyright purposes,
>> because even if it is boilerplate you have created, you hold the
>> copyright on it.  Warhol is your poster-boy there.
>>
>> --
>> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
>> phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
>> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
>> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
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