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Subject:Re: Electronic newsletters From:Faith Weber <weber -at- EASI -dot- ENET -dot- DEC -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 9 Aug 1993 17:30:45 PDT
On Mon, 9 Aug 1993, Eric Ray wrote:
>> First, as soon as something is posted to a newsgroup, the copyright
>> falls into question. I don't think the poster necessarily loses the
>> copyright, but claiming rights would be problematic at best.
Mike Showalter replies:
>Copyrights are not lost merely by means of a distribution method. If I'm
>the publisher of a newspaper, and I distribute it for free by leaving them
>in boxes on street corners, I still retain the copyright. Same goes for
>posting to a newsgroup or mailing list.
I like that theory. What I've heard, though, is that it's hard to
prove copyright, etc. of anything that's not printed on paper. I don't
know whether that means if you have it on paper *and* electronic form,
you're ok. The sense I get from the trade rags is they haven't quite
figured out what to do with all this electronic material yet in terms
of copyrights, privacy rights, and a whole bunch of other legal issues.
Any comm law types out there? Mike, do you fall into that category?
It would be interesting to know more about this.
Faith Weber
weber -at- easi -dot- enet -dot- dec -dot- com
