Pleading the 5th

[Jim Choate]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> Sigh. This reminds me of the old adage: Never get involved in an argument
> with the insane. You're not going to win, and it's not that much fun
> to watch Choate froth at the mouth.
> 
> There are two issues here: Implied consent, and fair use. That Choate
> can't, or refuses to, understand them speaks for itself.

Yep, let's bitch about how stupid I am and how I don't get it. And at the
same time hope nobody notices you're doing nothing but waving your hands.
Your forte is clearly the ad hominim.

There is no implied consent with respect to removing copyright from the
author of any traffic throug the CDR.

Simply joining this list, or any other, doesn't remove copyright. It
doesn't IMPLY anything outside of resticted permission of the subscribers
to use personaly (not commercialy mind you) as PARTICIPANTS IN THAT
PARTICULAR FORUM.

There is no 'implied stripping of rights' in the copyright law or any of
its applications.

'fair use' will certainly provide some relief for use of this material
outside of the forum it was submitted to. However, that still does not
strip rights or allow you for example to put your name on something as
your work (which is perfectly allowable under public domain) or to use it 
in a commercial venture of any kind without permission. If you don't get
that permission a priori then you open yourself up to relief for the
copyright holder under the copyright laws.

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