Chris Knight <cknight@crl.com> wrote:
I may be wrong, but I don't see it this way. Articles and research papers that I write are copyrighted. If I choose to distribute these in the net, it's a given that inet providers will have these stored on their drives. But... If you archive the net, and compile it into a different media that you then sell(presumably to make a profit), then there is a matter of copyright infringement.
So if I sell (at a profit) a netnews feed to subscribers via modem, it is not copyright infringement, but if I sell the same data on a CDROM, you cliam copyright infringement. So I suppose you want to give some kind of list of what types of media are acceptable for transmitting netnews feeds, and which are not? And I suppose that the Federal Copyright Beaureau will then need to enforce a new law to make sure that netnews is distributed only via government-approved methods. Ahh.. I can smell the new gummint conspiracy already. The plain and simple fact is: When you post a message to usenet, you do so with the expectation that others will receive it. You can have no way of knowing or limiting who may get it; that is given by the nature of the network. Usenet news is, and is intended to be, publicly accessable information. If there is something you don't want distributed, then DON'T POST IT!