Open Source or Open a Can of Worms

There are tons of documents that while not necessarily public or private domain, that I would like to link to or reproduce on my site. Where I can I'll just draw up similar documents of my own. But this raises the question...Are we in an age of open source or open jail cells? I know the correct answer is, it depends on the document. So, government documents can likely be reprinted, unless they want to maintain jurisdiction. Open Source is able to be reprinted, it says so in the liscense. What about advertisements? If there is a funny advertisement, I would assume it's fair game to be posted on facebook, because the marketing gurus want to plaster it as many places as possible. What about 0 cost eBooks, the distributor probably wants to retain the rights, but it's 0 cost right. It sure would be nice to have a short, 1 sentence, rule of thumb, for digital rights management that the weekend warrior and the bigwig can appreciate. http://versaglobe.com