From: lee@wang.com (Lee Story)
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing
Subject: Re: Copyrights on netnews articles
Date: 31 Jul 92 19:38:07 GMT
	<1992Jul24.185007.26058@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca>
	<mwm.1azh@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us>
	<1992Jul27.022855.27237@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca>
Distribution: na
Organization: Wang Laboratories, Inc.

In article <1992Jul27.022855.27237@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca> peterd@cc.mcgill.ca (Peter Deutsch) writes:
   In article <mwm.1azh@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us> mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us (Mike Meyer) writes:
   >In <1992Jul24.185007.26058@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca>, peterd@cc.mcgill.ca (Peter Deutsch) wrote:
   >> In article <mwm.1am1@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us> mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us (Mike Meyer) writes:
   >> >.  .  .. Posting must include implicit permission for many
   >> >kinds of copying; otherwise to many of the people providing services
   >> >to the net are open to lawsuits.  Anything else leaves to many people
   >> >to vulnerable to lawsuits.
   >> 
   >> Well, this does sound suspiciously like "if we all break the
   >> law, then we will [not ??] be sued, so let's agree to ignore the
   >> law", but it could just be me.

I think it's just you.  My reasoning follows below.

   [...]  We need to make it clear that the users of
   Usenet are as responsible for obeying the law as the rest
   of the citizenry. Once we agree on that, then it is merely
   a question of getting a ruling on what the law says about
   what we are doing. [...]

In following this thread, I've heard no one suggest that we denizens
of Usenet should receive privileges not to be shared by mere mortals;
but you skip over, and apparently take for granted, premises necessary
to your argument: (1) that the law, as currently written and
interpreted, is sufficiently reasonable that it should be followed (it
being, after all, only a human-created forceable restraint on socially
undesirable action); (2) that we should merely _obey_ the law, rather
than work with our fellow-citizens to _make_ new law appropriate to
this new medium (isn't the latter what "democracy" is about?)

   >> >That's why I'd like some reasonable mechanism in place so authors (and
   >> >those service providers) can recognize articles that have
   >> >restrictions, and deal with them appropriately.
   >> 
   >> We have exactly such a mechanism now. It's the
   >> "Distibution:" field of the header, and people regularly
   >> use it to control the automated copying software to limit
   >> distribution of their work.
   >
   >No, people regularly *try* to use it to limit the distribution of
   >their work. My feed is a gateway for an international company, and
   >thus gets *all* distributions. They give me the same.

   So your feed regularly violates the instructions of
   posters in mishandling of their work, and you are
   condoning their behaviour by not asking them to stop.

I gasp!!!!  The only reason I use the "Distribution:" field is to
reduce worldwide net traffic.  I'd always assumed that was its
purpose, though I would guess that 99% of us have never read the
instructions and justifications for each header field (which were,
after all, just written by news program writers, and surely have no
legal force).

If "Distribution:" is to be used to proactively prohibit further
distribution, how do I use it to limit traffic but permit such
distribution?  It seems I must include additional message text
granting such distribution.  Pretty soon you'd have me adding
disclaimers to all my phone calls; then perhaps to every casual verbal
comment.  This is one of the main reasons why I dislike the treatment
of BBS (and specifically Usenet) posting as protectable publication.
The defaults must work _the_other_way_ (no _implicit_ restrictions).
But it's not the main reason why I object.  (That below.)

[...a few paragraphs later...]

   I encounter few people today who argue that it is _okay_
   to steal software (although there are still a few). Yet I
   keep reading that even if I specifically put in copyright
   notices in my Usenet postings I am _still_ giving up all my
   residual rights under the copyright laws when I post. I
   really think this broken and we need to adjust our mental
   model of what is happening here.

The comparison with software piracy is infelicitous to say the least.
We have here a largely government- and public university- supported
network, primarily intended for the communication and sharing of
ideas.  My first reaction (which still seems a reasonable one, though
not the only one possible) on encountering it was that anything I
posted would be available to anyone in the community to do with what
they wish, save reproducing it in unattributed or falsely-attributed
form (which, if done intentionally, would seem to be fraud of some
sort).  That is _unless_ I explicitly placed a notice of copyright on
the material.  To judge by the dearth of such notices, very few people
are concerned enough to do so.  But suppose someone is concerned, or
claims he is.  Then I might wonder whether that person's actions, in
posting to a network which will replicate their words thousands of
times and present them to tens of thousands of readers, don't belie
and discredit such a notice, at least to the extent that the law might
(in practice) ignore any further _not_for_profit_ copying (onto
CD-ROMs, etc.)

An additional argument, and I think the strongest one, is that the net
is heavily subsidized by the taxpayers as an medium of communication
for research and discussion among a very privileged set of users (may
it expand!), and in that sense the content of transmissions should be
assumed to be _public_property_, and the authors deserving of no
special protection.  As you might expect, I also think that the sale
of commercial rights to inventions created at not_for_profit and
highly subsidized universities---and the recent creation of bio-tech
companies, etc., based on these rights---is highly unethical and
possibly illegal.  (Actually I don't care much whether it's illegal,
because I suspect that the law is enforced precisely where there is
money at stake, and generally in favor of the moneyed, ethical or not.
I _do_ care whether we are acting ethically toward our fellow citizens
who are innocently and unknowingly subsidizing us.)

   I also believe that with a combination of the
   "Distribution:" and "Expire:" fields, with a few agreed
   upon extensions, we can manage to control Usenet
   distribution enough to keep it out of the hands of the
   lawyers, provided site admins agreed to abide by a few
   simple rules (like, set up your site to adher to clear
   instructions already included in the headers).

You make it sound like we're bound to be the victims of the
legal profession and the moneyed interests whom they serve.
This seems to me a paranoid view which, if held consistently,
would make all informal cooperation (and most modern science)
impossible.

   The question is whether or not those zealots who insist
   that the net should be "free" will allow this to happen.
   Sadly, given the depth of feeling on both sides of this
   issue, I think we're going to have to await the court
   rulings and subsequent panic and shakeout. Pity we can't
   just behave like adults in the first place.

This sounds rather like a threat (to sic' the lawyers on 'em).  It's
also depressingly moralistic ("behave like adults" seems to mean
agreeing with you), to the extent that it reminds me of some of EN's
(you guess who) more extreme comments.  I don't think I'm a zealot
about this.  If the majority can be convinced that strong protection
of intellectual property (copyright et al) on bulletin boards is
desirable, and if there are reasonably non-intrusive ways of _not_
doing so when I don't want to (like _defaulting_ to the public domain
in the absence of CLEARLY WORDED notices---precisely what the
"Distribution:" field _doesn't_ do, though various "...Copyright:"
suggestions seem alright), they I'm all for it.

The alternatives have _not_ been conclusively shown to be either the
enforcement of a maze of legal restrictions, or the loss of the
network.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Lee Story (lee@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc.
            (this email address disappears 14 August;
 I may be reborn as lee@bostech.com or something similar in September)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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