Does anybody here know German copyright law?

[robkelk]

(Or can read German and has the search-fu to find Germany's copyright law online.)

I just downloaded a free document from the Wayback Machine's copy of a German website. The document states that it's Public Domain; however, it goes on to list usage and distribution restrictions.

In Canada, "Public Domain" means you give up all copyrights to the files, so either there shouldn't be any usage and distribution restrictions, or this isn't what my country's laws call Public Domain. Can somebody confirm the meaning of "Public Domain" in Germany, please?

[Epsilon]

Maybe a mistranslation of Creative Commons?

[robkelk]

Apparently so. I asked this on another forum and have been told about "Urheberrecht", which is similar in practice to the British "moral rights" - these trump what we consider to be PD.

Thanks!