From: c23st@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com (Spiros Triantafyllopoulos)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek
Subject: Another Legal Brief for the net.lawyers
Date: 18 Aug 92 01:24:57 GMT

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Kingdom of  Tri* Land		Legal Brief	     Kingdom of Tri*  Land
Department of Justice				     Department of Justice
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Here are some more interesting legal questions for Meatloaf's lawyers at
'Turkiye Consulati Lawyeriye Serai'. If you're intelligent enough, could
you please answer the stuff here:

1. 	I'll give you the points for claiming that posting the GIF file
	without proper reference is not cool according to 'US copyright law'. 
	(How's that? I agree with Hasan once again...)     BUT...

2. 	How different is this than the hundrends of thousands of alleged 
	`violations of copyright` that occur in Usenet land... From the
	fonts put in archive servers (while they or the fonts they were
	created from were copyrighted, recently found in the windows 
	FTP archive server (cica)), to pieces of source code given
	out as examples and not properly credited, magazine articles,
	etc. So we're talking the same kind of violation that one incurs
	when tearing off a matress tag.

	The issue here is the size and scope of the work
	posted "without permission". When one of Doug Adams' novels
	appeared in rec.sci-fi.wherever, the entire thing, that's 
	a violation. When one quotes a manual without referencing,
	as in "ls - list the contents of a directory" from Unix manpages,
	which is then included in an FAQ, which is then archived in
	an FTP server, is that the same as the ftp'able novel?

3.	We still do not know whether the copyright of an IEEE article
	includes the author's biographical information. Perhaps the
	'Turkiye Consulati Lawyeriye Serai' could verify this. I would
	think information such as that is not copyrightable as it
	contains no intellectual value or information of its own. Is the
	fact that someone's working at Wendy's and went to school at Purdue
	a copyrightable issue? Is his/her picture copyrightable? (Had I
	been able to do so, 'Tri*' would have been 'Tri* (c)' long ago).

4.	Does the 'US copyright law' contain something called 'fair use'?
	Do you understand what 'fair use' is?

5.	If it does, and you do understand how to use or apply it,
	are the following pristine examples cases of fair use?

	a.	Quoting of authors in a widely distributed media to a
		spectacularly high level. I.e. about 20-30 times a day
		for "Men are Like That" alone. If you wrote a letter to
		the editor in a few newspapers, and included a reference
		to "Men are Like That", all would be cool. But if the
		letter (or variations thereof) appear on a daily basis
		in ten or twenty newspapers, and several of these
		letters appear every day, is that 'fair use'?

	b.	Quoting with permission is fine. Swell. How about 
		cases where context is ommited, and the quote is used
		to alter the original work's meaning. See quotes from
		Russian-Japanese war of 1905 being used in our (1918)
		current context, the infamous 'Mutlu' Ellipses ..., 
		paragraph cooking, etc. Much of that was documented
		by Rob Milson. Is selective quoting, which in essense
		twists the original work, 'fair use'?

	c.	Over the last few months I pretty much have read
		"Men are Like that" on the net, courtesy of 'Mutlu'.
		(only parts which support his theory actually, but still
		a SUBSTANTIAL CHUNK of the entire book). While posting
		excerpts (sp?) may be cool, is posting the entire thing,
		in pieces, considered 'fair use'?

		[Hint: Look at the analogy with the Doug Adams novel]

	d.	Using quoted material in order to arrive at a 
		conclusion other than the one the original author
		had intended. A good example is Prof. McCarthy's
		work. When Prof. McCarthy himself points out that
		you ('Mutlu') are wrong, and you keep using his work
		to arrive at your own distorted conclusions, is this
		considered 'fair use'?

	e.	Using quoted material in collaboration with idiotic
		and degrading statements often made by 'Mutlu' (a 2,000
		line file available upon request). This only helps
		demean the scholarly value of the original work,
		thus potentially damaging the original author's
		credibility. The way it is right now, I wouldn't
		ask any of your (alive) sources the time of day,
		and I am not the only one. Is that 'fair use'?
	
	f. 	Is adding sub-titles (such as the one on "Men are
		Like That (Memoirs of an Armenian officer who
		participated in the genocide of 2.5  million Muslim people)"
		considered 'fair use?' Were they part of the original
		work? Don't think so. 

	g.	Come to think of it, don't most books/articles/
		other EXPLICITLY include warnings against use or reproduction
		in some	electronic form or another?

6.	In regards to item 1, news.sysadmin.policy's last 20 or so messages
	(don't think you read this group but anyhow) contains some very
	interesting discussions on the distribution of images in the alt.*
	hierarchy. Copyrighted images from magazines, record covers, etc.
	Read the stuff there and then come back for more...
	
I somehow know the answer in advance. Issues related to "Men are Like That"
will be answered with the periodic flames against Rob Milson. Issues
regarding Prof. McCarthy will be answered with the periodic flames against
David Sternlight. And so on... But all I am looking for is YES's or NO's.

PS: If you don't plan to answer the issues above, don't bother us with 
Kute-Kuotes (tm) about square planets. We all know how clever you are. Just
answer question 5, that will be enough for us. Or, better yet, stuff it.

Spiros
--
Spiros Triantafyllopoulos                       c23st@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com 
OUZO POWER                                      striantafyll@kosds1.gm.hac.com