“Rowland Croucher” managed to type the following:

But I [ … ] and am delighted for anyone to pinch anything they want, with or without acknowledgement, provided that if they put my name on it it’s ‘copied right’! Same with stuff I’ve written on our website. I believe that to copyright any of my writings is against God’s will for me, but I freely acknowledge a different stance by others, and will respect their wishes in this regard.

And a well-informed ‘Net-friend responded:

This is actually in perfect harmony with existing copyright laws. These laws are meant to give the originator of creative works the “right” to decide who may or may not “copy” (and use) the work. If an author, artist, musician, whatever, wants to make their work “open source” or “freeware” they’re perfectly able to do that. Others have reason to attempt to keep their work for their own purposes, alone, or to put restrictions on the use of their original works. It’s pretty much a flexible thing, but ultimately, the originator of the work has the legal right to decide what does or does not happen to the work in question. It’s meant as a protection for the creatives of the world (although there is much abuse of these laws by corporations who want to keep a stranglehold on their icons and images and so forth, but that’s another discussion entirely).

This post is just for general information, by the way, because there seems to be so much misunderstanding about copyright laws in Australia and elsewhere. I have this inbuilt urge to provide information whenever it seems appropriate and I know something about the subject. It’s just part of my character.

Some links that may be of interest:

http://www.whatiscopyright.org/ (General information based on the Berne Convention and interpreted for the internet)

http://www.copyright.org.au/ (Australian Copyright Council)

http://www.opencontent.org/ (Open Content)

And no, I don’t think this has all that much to do with Christianity or anything else of the sort. It does have to do with the discussion, though. 🙂

And, well, I’m hoping this will get archived at Google and provide good information for people searching for information on copyright laws, copyright, internet, usenet, Berne convention, and other appropriate keywords. Hehehe.