Are government-issued publications and broadcasts in the ROC in the public domain? There are people who take, for example, VOA broadcasts and annotate them or do other things with them for profit; can that also be done with ROC materials of similar source?
Not all of them. For example that fine GIO publication, Taiwan Review, which I write for from time to time, for some of the articles the copyright is held by the author (which would be me! See the little copyright notice in last month’s Taiwan Review) if it is a freelance piece.
There seems to be the idea, which from a strict legal perspective is mistaken, that materials produced by government agencies automatically are “public domain”. And that is not true. For an example of that, the Judicial Council of California (a state agency) has copyrighted (with the little “C” on every page!) the new civil jury instructions in California.
take care,
Brian