From: peterd@bunyip.com (Peter Deutsch)
Subject: Re: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available
Organization: McGill University
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 08:41:13 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.044339.16816@gtephx.UUCP> forda@gtephx.UUCP (Andrew Ford  
@ AGCS, Phoenix, Arizona) writes:

  .  .
> 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.

Errr, reality check. Chuq von Rospach does not own Usenet, and
McGill University did not enter into a contractural arrangement with him
to define our relationship with Usenet. And the fact that this quite well
written primer reappears regularly does not make it any more valid. There
are postings in soc.history that deny the Holocaust ever happens. Just because
they reappear regularly does NOT make _them_ any more valid, either.

> 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.)

Yeah, and Brad Templeton's regular postings to comp.orf.eff.talk
regularly assure me that I have not. Now, Brad runs a company distributing
copyright material given to him by BIG BUSINESSES so, he must be right, eh?

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

That simple little primer does not define copyright law, in the U.S. or 
elsewhere. That may not be as you like it but it is what copyright law 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.

Out of curiosity, what jurisprudence do you base this opinion on? (you may
be right, but it doesn't sound all that likely and given that noone here
seems to have many concrete cases to cite, I'd be interested in how you
came to this conclusion...)

  .  .
> 
> 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.)

As the guy who first brought the Internet to Montreal, and installed what
I believe was the first Usenet feed, I'm sure I'd recall asking McGill to
sign any contracts that did that, since I try to be careful and _NOT_ sign
such things myself. On the other had, we were pretty busy when getting 
everything up and running, so it's possible I mislaid the document you and I 
presumably signed entering into this so-called contractural. Could you please 
send me a notarized copy. I suspect that my giving away the copyright for 
everyone in Quebec when we installed Usenet is going to get me into trouble 
around here when people finally find out what I've done and I'd better have
the paperwork ready when the McGill lawyers call me in.

Seriously, "contract"? "Renounce copyright"?  NOT!!!


				- peterd
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk