Sometimes trying to explain copyright and fair use to teachers and others can be a confusing exercise. For both of us.
The US system of intellectual property laws are such a strange collection of exceptions that it’s hard to know for sure what’s right and wrong.
However, it doesn’t help the comprehension of us non-legal types when governments try to do stupid things like this.
The State of Oregon has told several public interest groups they cannot publish state laws on their web sites due to copyright restrictions.
Government lawyers claim that since the state has already posted the material on their own web site, with lots of errors and probably in a format that’s difficult to search, they’ve done their duty.
Just disregard that an independent group can probably do a better job than the state of putting the information into a form that people can actually understand and use.
So, is “State of Oregon” also a registered trademark?