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Subject:Electronic Newsletters From:Jim Taylor <j -dot- taylor5 -at- GENIE -dot- GEIS -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 12 Aug 1993 04:08:00 BST
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.
Faith Weber replies:
>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.
The Digital Publishing RoundTable in GEnie has a round table with
a topic for discussing copyright issues. I asked the question Faith Weber
asked above in that topic and received the following reply.
Copyright is INHERENT in a work when you create it. If you can prove you
created it, you can prove you own the copyright.
There are a couple of ways in which copyright can be lost; but the 1978(?)
revision of the copyright law tightened up almost all of those loopholes.
Now,
in order to lose a copyright, you pretty much have to say specifically that
you are renouncing your rights; or, of course, the copyright can eventually
expire.
If you're worried about something, just slap your copyright notice on it.
That
itself provides a legal presumption that you _are_ indeed the copyright
holder. For additional protection, you register it with the Copyright
Office...and then YOU don't have to prove that you own it; THE OTHER PERSON
has to prove that they do when you sue them for infringement.
The new law (I hesitate to say "new," since it's been in effect for some
years
now) very strongly places the presumption of ownership with the authors and
the burden of proof on infringers.
--- Ed <who ain't a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt; but who has
studied these issues somewhat>
Jim Taylor
j -dot- taylor -at- genie -dot- geis -dot- com
