archiving on inet

[Blake Coverett]

jazz at hal.com, in a message on 1 February, wrote:

JA> If you were a ligitimate recipient of the work in the first place (i.e. g
JA> it in a newsfeed) and you store those postings for your own use or for th
JA> use of others on that node in the store-and-forward network, then you can
JA> keep the work 'til the bits rot. Infringement occurs when you copy those
JA> bits onto some medium for some purpose other than store-and-forward
JA> propagation or the allowed fair-use exceptions; stuffing articles on a
JA> CD-ROM and selling them falls into neither category and hence is an
JA> infringement.

Hmm... why is "stuffing articles on a CD-ROM and selling them" not a type
of store-and-forward propagation?  Usenet is not just a bunch of machines
speaking CNews.

I agree that you have a copyright on the expression of ideas that make up
a Usenet post.  However I maintain that by posting them on Usenet you are
explicitly allowing them to be distributed (either freely or for a cost)
by all methods used to distribute Usenet.


I would seem obvious to me that taking a nice piece of Usenet prose 
and publishing it a collection of essays would be in violation of
a copyright.  On the other hand, publishing the same thing in a collection 
of this month's Usenet traffic would not.  People redistribute and sell
your Usenet postings all the time, why would it make a difference if they
do so via CD-ROM?


-Blake  
(Never underestimate the bandwidth of a trunk full of CD-ROMs)  
...
 * ATP/DJgcc 1.42 * blake.coverett at canrem.com, disclaimers? fooey!