Xref: utzoo news.groups:21663 comp.sys.atari.st:28962 misc.legal:18918 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!gdt!exspes From: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee) Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.sys.atari.st,misc.legal Subject: Re: The comp.sys.atari.st.tech vote -- clarifications Message-ID: <1990Jun13.094928.9023@gdr.bath.ac.uk> Date: 13 Jun 90 09:49:28 GMT References: <1990May18.214123.14992@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> <1990May22.023212.9736@melba.bby.oz.au> Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee) Organization: University of Bristol c/o University of Bath Lines: 33 In article ralph@laas.fr writes: >In article <1990May22.023212.9736@melba.bby.oz.au> zvs@bby.oz.au (Zev Sero) writes: >| In article <1990May18.214123.14992@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> schultzd@frith.uucp (David Schultz) writes: >| >| If someone sends me U.S. mail, I can do whatever the He** I want with it, >| including xerox it and mail it to everyone in the World! >| >| No, you can't. Not without the writer's permission. Ever heard of >| copyright? > >I'm not so sure! Doesn't the copyright have to be explicit? And >what's in *my* mailbox becomes *my* property, isn't that so? In the US, what is mailed to you becomes your property from the moment it is mailed -- put into a mailbox or handed across a post office counter. However, what you own is ONLY that physical copy -- NOT any further rights such as reproduction. You CAN show it to anyone else in the world, but you CAN'T necessarily copy it. I'm not sure what the analogy for electronic mail would be, where there is no physical copy. Feels like it ought to be 'you can forward it to one person, if you don't keep a copy yourself' and 'you can let anyone read it from your terminal'. Explicit copyright (notices or registration) are NOT strictly required. Though your failure to do something explicit would probably influence the nature or severity of any court judgement if you sued someone for copying your work. (Especially if you DIDN't put a copyright notice in, and someone else grabbed it and stuck THEIR copyright notice on.) -- Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!ukc!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132