Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: UUCP Maps Used For Commerce
Message-ID: <1989Sep16.190722.8517@twwells.com>
Date: 16 Sep 89 19:07:22 GMT
References: <2048@avsd.UUCP> <1989Sep15.160053.25109@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Lines: 43

Here we go again....

In article <1989Sep15.160053.25109@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu writes:
: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers) writes:
: >USENET ? Isn't that in the public domain ?
:
: According to my recollection of the copyright law changes in 1989, no.
: I seem to recall the copyright laws are now such that there is an
: implied copyright unless it's explicitly waived.

That is correct. And the compilers of the maps, not the individuals
who provides the map entries hold the copyright. The individual map
entries may or may not be copyrighted; that is a fine point I haven't
looked up.

:                                                  To my way of thinking,
: this could put quite a crimp on Usenet redistribution services.

This particular issue has been hashed over in the publishing
business. A user of something like the maps may not duplicate the
maps themselves (other than for "fair use") but may make use of the
*information* contained therein.

The argument would then be whether a mailing list made by extracting
lines from the file is a copy. My guess is that the courts would say
that using the lists raw would be making a copy. However, there is a
gotcha. If the user of the list were to admix any effort of their
own, say by looking each address up in a phone book, or
cross-checking it against another list, the courts are likely to rule
the other way.

: If it gets to that point, we've ALL already lost...

I think that a lawsuit settling the copyright issue on Usenet would
freshen a lot of stale air. We really do need to know whether the
Usenet is legally a publishing medium (nevermined that in reality it
is: the law frequently invents its own reality); we really do need to
know if any of our copyrights are valid, in particular the GNU
copyleft and other forms of redistribution restriction.

---
Bill                    { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill
bill@twwells.com