On Wed, 26 Jan 1994, Matthew J Ghio wrote:
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!
Again, I may be wrong, since I am not a lawyer, nor would I want to be shot as one... You didn't seem to like my thoughts about "media shift"... Let's say the same thing in a different example... You wrote a letter to Communications Week which was published; something you expected. George over there runs a news stand, and he sells Communication Week; nobody has a problem with him selling magazines for a living, do we? But, we have Bill over here who subscribed to CW, photocopies articles and letters he likes, and compiles these into a book which he then sells... Now we have a problem. I'm not trying to draw lines, but I do see a change of media as a reason to request the author's permission to re-publish. You would be distributing the material in a way different than the author intended. -ck