The Act was signed into law Oct. 27, 1998. Translations of copyrighted works are original, creative works . A translation is considered a derivation of an original, creative work. While the translation is protected by copyright the person creating and publishing the translated work must secure permission to do so from the original copyright holder. Forwarding messages from one Internet mail list to another is not an infringement of copyright .
Fixation is one of the tests for determining whether a work has been reproduced in tangible form.
By posting a message to a list, the poster is actually providing copies of that message to each member of the list. Further, scanning a book or other document into digital form is reproducing that material. Any works which are digitized are copied. What is still unclear is whether copyright infringement extends to subsequent copies of the original posting of the message being forwarded to other lists. Copyright infringement only exists if someone claims the work of another as their own .