archiving on inet

[Kirk Sheppard]

Usenet copyrightable? I still doubt it. Of course, the only way to 
find out is to file a very expensive lawsuit. Most posters would not find 
their postings worth the expense to sue on copyright. Only a very rich 
dilletante, or someone less rich who is a fanatic on the subject is 
likely to do so.  Also, you would have a hard time answering the 
difference between charging for a usenet feed and charging for a cd-rom, 
again I see little difference except that one is more prompt in time than 
the other. But, again, my newsfeed from a BBS which might be 24 hrs 
delayed, and my netcom account which is much faster and a cd-rom differs 
only as to time removed from the original posting. 

Kirk Sheppard

kshep at netcom.com

P. O. Box 30911             "It is  Better to Die on Your Feet Than to 
Bethesda, MD 20824-0911      Live On Your Knees."
U.S.A.
			    			     - Emiliano Zapata


On Tue, 1 Feb 1994, Jason Zions wrote:

> 
> > Furthermore, just because something is forwarded and something is archived
> >I don't believe is expressly covered in copyright law.
> 
> It's not the forwarding or the archiving that makes anything covered by
> copyright law; it is the setting down, in concrete form, the expression of
> an idea.
> 
> > Others could argue that postings by their very nature, when posted 
> >become "public domain", and thus not copyrightable.
> 
> Not successfully in court, I should think. How is a posting any different
> than the production of a radio program which is distributed by
> store-and-forward satellite distribution and then played through the radio
> station and received at your home radio? The mechanisms are close to
> identical in their attributes; tapes at the stations have some lifetime,
> timeshifting can occur, special equipment is needed to perceive the work,
> etc.
> 
> >Finally what is the tangible difference between storing usenet postings 
> >on a hard disk for an indefinite time, or on a cd-rom, or a cd that is 
> >re-writable, or tape or any other storage device? Not very much I would 
> >argue.
> 
> If you were a ligitimate recipient of the work in the first place (i.e. got
> it in a newsfeed) and you store those postings for your own use or for the
> use of others on that node in the store-and-forward network, then you can
> keep the work 'til the bits rot. Infringement occurs when you copy those
> bits onto some medium for some purpose other than store-and-forward
> propagation or the allowed fair-use exceptions; stuffing articles on a
> CD-ROM and selling them falls into neither category and hence is an
> infringement.
> 
> Jason
>