----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
          I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding of the unclassified data
          produced by the Federal Government of the United States (TIGER
          and STF3a Census data, and Digital Chart of the World, for
          example) is that it is public domain--there is no copyright.
          This is not the case with other governments; for example, the
          British government maintains a copyright on the map data
          generated by the Ordinance Survey.  Data obtained from other,
          non-Federal sources, like the Landsat program, are copywritten by
          the provider and this data is generally only made available to a
          restricted audience as part of the sales agreement, anyway.
 
          Alan Brenner, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency
          My opinions, etc....