From: forda@gtephx.UUCP (Andrew Ford @ AGCS, Phoenix, Arizona)
Subject: Re: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available
Organization: gte
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 04:43:39 GMT

In article <1992Jul24.181242.25567@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca>, peterd@cc.mcgill.ca (Peter Deutsch) writes:
[...]
> And my own two cents? I think I own the copyright on
> everything I write (including this piece) and I'm happy to
> see it propagated around the Internet electronically,
> provided it is made available to readers for nothing more
> than the cost of reproduction and distribution. I do _not_
> want to see my work turning up in the printed press, hear
> it read out on the evening news or see it turned into a
> Hollywood mini-series without those responsible contacting
> me to arrange for the delivery of royalties and residuals
> and a thank you note, plus of course to see that they
> spell my name correctly.
> 
> I suspect that current copyright law is not going to have
> all that much trouble dealing with this issue when it's
> finally presented to the courts, and I suspect that what
> will come out of it is something more like "no you can't
> copy it outside of the context of an automatically
> maintained bulletin board", rather than hear that there is
> now some utopian world where people renounce all rights to
> their work in perpetuity simply by posting it to a shared
> bulletin board.

It is not simply the act of posting to a shared bulletin board
that puts non copyrighted posts into the public domain.

I agree with you philosophically (sp?), but the cold truth is that
you contract away your copyrights unless you place an explicit 
copyright notice in your posts.

Read "A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community" in
news.announce.newusers and news.answers for the fine print
of your agreement in using usenet.

It explicitly states that you are to assume that you have lost
all copyrights to anything not posted with a copyright notice.
(Basically, posts sans copyright notice are placed in the 
public domain: and you cannot sue someone for using it because
you did not realize that you placed it in the public domain.)

That may not be as you like it, but it is what usenet is.

(IMHO, it is still unethical to use public domain works without
properly crediting the author.)

BTW, When I do copyright, I add an explicit license for all usenet 
facilities because the action of posting carries more weight in
a court of law than the words at the end of my posts.

The notice I use is:
>
>                    Copyright 1992
>                  Andrew William Ford
>                  All Rights Reserved
>Permission to reproduce is hereby granted provided that:
>A.  1.  Reproduction is not for profit.
>    or
>    2.  The work is reproduced on Usenet or in Usenet archives 
>        along with regular Usenet content.
>And
>B.  The work and this notice are in no way altered.
>
>Contact Andrew Ford at  XXXX X XXXXXX XXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX  XXXXX
>for any other usage.
(what, give my street address in the middle of this flame fest??!??!?)

The above notice is placed here for purposes of discussion and is
not a true copyright notice for this post (meaning this post, like
most, is in the public domain)

Note the section B in followups: if I quote part of your post
and leave off the copyright, then Joe Bloe see my follow up and
publishes, *I* have committed copyright infringement and when
you sue Joe, he'll include me and I'll probably pay through the
nose!

For those who have questioned my opinions of intellectual works,
I do respect copyrights, I just don't respect fools who do not 
understand that they can contract away their rights. (And, believe
me, when you post to usenet, you are entering into a contract 
which includes all of the terms and conditions which have been
presented to you -- whether or not you read them before agreeing
to them is entirely your problem.  See news.announce.newuser
for a listing of those documents containing the agreements.)


-- 
"25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with
no permit of any kind: some say it's crazy.  However, 4 out of 5 US murders are 
committed in the other half of the country: so who is crazy?"   -  Andrew Ford
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