Jim -

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Where is this agreement that it is ok to distribute material through a 'stor

e-

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and-forward' network stated in the copyright law? I would be very interested

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in the proviso that exempts such networks from liability.

It's not embedded in the law; as I said, it's an implicit permission I grant when I post a message to such a network. Just as, when you buy a program on a floppy disk, you are implicitly granted the right to copy it from the disk into your computer's memory in order to run it: the nature of the work requires that specific type of copying. There's nothing new there.

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The bottem line is that when I got my feed I was not asked to sign any kinjd

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of waiver releasing any material that I generate from copyright infringement

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as long as it was on a hard drive (or any other media). I did not sign any kind of contract at all as a matter of fact. Legaly I still retain my right of copyright on every bit on every drive (whether magnetic or otherwise) in the internet and even your personal drive if you transfer the mail and other

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material to it for offline processing.

One more time. The nature of the work and your chosen distribution medium (netnews) requires a variety of copying for it to work: store-and-forward for propagation, copying into the memory of my system and onto my screen so I can read it. You grant permission to do that implicitly when you make the work available by that mechanism.

Once I have received the copy you have implicitly authorized me to have, what I can *do* with that copy is governed by the Copyright Act and its fair use exemptions. I can use it for purposes of scholarship (i.e. I can keep it in an online or paper folder and refer to it later) and I can excerpt pieces for critique, among other things. What I *cannot* do is redistribute it by any other mechanisms and for any purpose other than your initial netnews distribution.

I have spent a lot of time studying this part of the law. Really. I already heeded my glib advice about reading the damn copyright act. Have you?

Jason

when I buy a software program the copyright notice specificaly states that I am allowed to make copies for backup purposes. Some of them notices on high- dollar packages even tell me how many I can keep and whether I can keep them on a network or not.