Thanks to the Berne Convention the post is automatically considrered copyrighted. To make it public domain the author would have to explicitly state such. | [reply] |
That's entirely true. However, although IANAL, I do believe that a "reasonable person" rule may apply. If I ask you a question, and you respond, even in writing, a "reasonable person" would assume that I am going to use your response in the context of my question, regardless of copyright.
Or, if I were to post some code to the Snippets section, a "reasonable person" would assume that I intend for people to use said code. If I did not want people to use it, I would not publish it in such a place.
As a further example, although I don't own the copyright to anything I read or heard in university, I think a "reasonable person" would infer that I was to use the information gained from those books and lectures in my career. And the same "reasonable person" would probably also infer that perlmonks is much like a school with multiple teachers and students (with a very thick, blurry line overlapping the two).
Again, IANAL, but if some monk tried to sue me for using their posted code in my own software (personal, public, or proprietary), I would definitely use a "reasonable person" defense.
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US copyright law contains provisions that cover academic research and fair use likely covers the code snippits. After that you are left with a weak defense in court. Much better to ask the author first.
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