Verbatim copies may be freely distributed as long as this copyright notice is also included. Short excerpts are permitted as long as reference to the author are included. The GNU GPL goes farther. It allows modified copies of the work to be published. We may want to allow this in some cases.
Software documentation is a good example.
I for one would not mind at all if someone were to improve and republish anything I write. I put the standard GPL notice on every file I publish.