Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!bbn!bbn.com!cosell
From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: In Moderation - Good or Bad?
Message-ID: <41404@bbn.COM>
Date: 14 Jun 89 02:53:42 GMT
References: <1989Jun12.100943.24233@ateng.ateng.com> <2482@asylum.SF.CA.US>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 45

In article <2482@asylum.SF.CA.US> romkey@asylum.UUCP (John Romkey,The Asylum) writes:
}In article <1989Jun12.100943.24233@ateng.ateng.com> chip@ateng.ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
}>(Of course, all this may turn out to me moot.  The In Moderation people
}>still have to deal with the issue of article copyright.  Until they settle
}>that problem, I wouldn't fork over any hard-earned dollars, even if I did
}>want to subscribe.)
}
}Um, I don't see any copyright here. The courts are very strict on what
}they accept as a valid copyright (for the reason of avoiding people
}saying "Well, that *was* my copyright message and they didn't
}understand it" after the fact, when it was written in Sanskrit or
}something).

Um, you're a little behind the times.  As of 1 march of this year the US became
a signatory to the Berne convention.  The major change is that articles are
*born* copyrighted by their authors, copyright notice or not.  

}>Copyright 1989 by Chip Salzenberg. You may redistribute this article
}>only to those who may freely do likewise.

I don't think that this hacks it.  By the old US copyright laws your copyright
notice is technically proper; although no longer necessary.  And the
additional restriction seems so vaguely worded that it'll never fly ("freely"?
is "redistribute" well enough defined?  What if the reason for the
lack-of-freedeom to redistribute is due to a third party,  can yOU now sue ME?
I may have no way of even KNOWING what you do with my feed (since I and the
folks I share a feed with have no contractual obligation to one another that 
I know of).

If anyone is really serious about this (and it is hard to imagine how or why,
since no one experiences any real "damages" from this "violation") you should
go consult a lawyer.

}(so
}please, everyone, let's not start flaming about who knows more about
}copyrights, okay?).

No flame, just bringing you up to date.  As you mention, a LOT of this sort of
stuff is all court-determined, and I think that things are even worse now,
because since we just crossed a new copyright-law epoch we need a WHOLE NEW
series of court tests to find out just how those laws will be applied in the
US.  I was told that the European legal world is SO different from the US
(standards of evidence, etc), that there is little "advance warning" to be had.

  /Bernie\