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From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: UUCP Maps Used For Commerce
Message-ID: <1989Sep18.073009.15189@twwells.com>
Date: 18 Sep 89 07:30:09 GMT
References: <2048@avsd.UUCP> <1989Sep15.160053.25109@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> <1989Sep16.190722.8517@twwells.com> <1989Sep17.180618.1434@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Lines: 130

In article <1989Sep17.180618.1434@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu writes:
: >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.
:
: That wasn't exactly my point, though it is true. My point was that each
: individual article was copyrighted by its author, and that redistribution
: of articles could be affected by that copyright. The map maintainers
: probably have a compilation copyright (just like Brad Templeton), but
: the map entries are almost certainly copyrighted by their respective
: authors. However:

There are three possible copyrights involved. The first is the UUCP
Mapping Project's, the second is that of each person who submits a
compilation of maps, and the third is that of the individual map
entry submitter. The first should have rights to the entire
collection of maps, the second should have rights to each posting,
but the question is open as to whether the third has any rights at
all. Given that the individual map entries are fixed in form and of
strictly informational content, I believe, by analogy to decisions in
the print publishing field, that copyright does not apply.

: >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.
:
: I'm sure this is correct, and I wasn't attempting to argue otherwise. My
: point was about resending articles in full, not using excerpts or
: information from them. Excerpts of articles almost certainly come under
: fair use, and the information contained in Usenet postings (including
: the maps) is there for anyone to use, including the mailing list people.

Well, it is a wholly open question as to whether posting to the
Usenet will entail giving up some of one's copyright. The primary
question is whether Usenet is a publishing medium. I'm of the opinion
that the courts will hold that it is since the legal definition of
"publish" is mostly "to make known to people in general", and Usenet
certainly does that at least as well as publishing a book does. Now,
I expect that the law will say that distribution of postings via
Usenet and its associated mechanisms is not a violation of copyright.
The argument for that one is simple: posting to the net implies that
one grant agency to the net (considered as an entity) for the
purposes of propagating the message. If that argument is accepted,
the author can not enforce restrictions on the propagation of
postings on normal channels of Usenet since, by posting, he has to
allow Usenet to act as his agent.

To the extent that Usenet is considered to act as an agent for the
poster, the rights entailed by that agency will have been lost by the
poster. This also suggests the limits that the courts will place on
that loss of rights.

So, resending an article through the net, archiving, distributing
articles from archives, and processing maps for routing, are likely
to be considered rights that the posted has transferred to the net,
or more properly, to each person on the net responsible for these
activities. It will be interesting to see just exactly what legal
fiction is invented to deal with all this. :-) (Not that I'm decrying
legal fictions: the law invents entities of wierd kinds in order that
it be possible to deal with real things. By doing so it makes it
possible for us to come to some kind of agreement about them. In many
cases, and the net is certainly one, any fiction that does not simply
outlaw the net or require manual intervention for each posting at each
site is likely to be safer than the legal limbo the net is in right
now.)

: >: 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.
:
: In some ways I agree. If we could somehow find out these things without
: a real court, I'd love it. But that's obviously impossible, and my fear
: is that all the noise generated by a full-scale lawsuit of this form
: might destroy the organizations it's supposed to protect:

That is a possibility. Which suggests that the right way is for there
to be a series of small suits, each carefully selected to test one
piece of the law. This does not have to be acrimonious.

:                                                        Similarly, a
: GNU suit might result in 1) the FSF wins outright --- and lots of
: developers stop using GNU tools, or 2) the FSF loses, and stops writing
: free software (which, if the copyright were to be judged non-binding,
: they might very well do).

More likely, something between. Whatever the law decides, I'm sure
that people will be able to find some way to distribute free software
while retaining the copyrights they want.

Here's an example of how that could be done. Suppose that I set up an
archive on my system and, before accepting anything for archiving,
got a signed agreement from the author stating that, in exchange for
my protecting his copyright, he will let me distribute his software.
And suppose that I got a signed agreement from anyone who I was
willing to let access my system that he would agree to abide by the
copyrights stored with the archived data in exchange for the right to
obtain that material. One could also have agreements from sites that
indicates that they get such an agreement from anyone who would
access my archive from that site, thus decentralizing the paperwork.

This effectively gets the agreement of the user to the copyright
conditions and completely eliminates the question of whether the
copyright is valid. In fact, "copyrights" becomes something of a
misnomer; they are really addenda to the various agreements. The
question would become whether those conditions are valid as a part of
a contract, a much easier question for which the usual answer is
"yes".

One could also envision an agency which collects these agreements as
a service to archivists and runs an authentication server for them.
Heck, one could envision a government agency for just that purpose.
Better, if the electronic authentication problem gets a solution that
is legally satisfactory, all this could just be yet another protocol
on the Internet....

For the security of knowing just what the law is, I'd be willing to
deal with the additional troubles of such a system. And, knowing the
ignorance of government officials, I'd prefer a system invented by us
than one mandated by them.

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