Newsgroups: comp.archives.admin Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!ox.com!msen.com!emv From: emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) Subject: Re: copyright status and future development of comp.archives In-Reply-To: oz@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca's message of 25 Jun 91 06:41:10 GMT Message-ID: Sender: usenet@ox.com (Usenet News Administrator) Organization: MSEN, Inc. Ann Arbor MI References: <1991Jun24.001311.11155@newshub.ccs.yorku.ca> <1991Jun24.175523.17435@cirrus.com> Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1991 18:21:00 GMT Lines: 69 OZ.91Jun25014110@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca oz@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes: Maybe you misunderstood what I wrote. I am only objecting to the copyrighted re-post of public (that is, it is available anyone who wants it without any restrictions) information articles posted by others, while I acknowledge that it takes some effort to do the selective re-post, as with any other moderated newsgroup. Would your objections be the same if the copyright applied only to the entire collection of information posted to comp.archives, and not to individual messages? That is to say, no matter how someone got an MSEN Archive Service posting announcing a new version of the Scheme bibliography, they'd be able to share that with their friends so long as they didn't give a full feed of msen.* to someone who didn't subscribe. This could probably be taken care of strictly with contracts, but copyright notices serve an equivalent effect. Actually, I'd even let them (or encourage them!) to send out a full feed of the original articles that made up the MSEN Archive Service, sans copyright, verification, editing, ? advertising ?, keywords, see-also information, References: lines that point back to the original announcements, and perhaps with a few of the articles that I rejected tossed in for good measure. My objection is mostly on the philosophical grounds, but you may wish to get more technical, as many people did during the the Stargate affair. They began copyrighting their articles to disallow Stargate's copyright and its restrictions, but that was 1986/87. The MSEN Archive Service has nothing to do with Stargate. The lessons have been learned. It has a lot more to do with something like Clarinet, especially given that I'd like to mix in some explicitly copyrighted (no redistribution allowed) materials that appear on the NewsBytes wire. The intellectual property rights of the original authors will be respected, because obviously if I piss too many people off all this effort will be wasted. I currently have a few individual authors blocked from being reposted to comp.archives, I'd be happy to add anyone who complains. Now, there is no need to bother even in the US, as per Geneva convention, all articles are implicitly copyright by their authors. I think the implications of this for any "derivative works" such as the article contents of comp.archives is reasonably clear. I don't think it's clear at all, and I resent your implications that comp.archives is just a rebroadcasting service. I add a significant amount of value, not only in the selection and presentation of the materials, but also in the verification and categorization of articles as they come out. In fact, it's not necessary for me to explicitly assert copyrights to the article contents of comp.archives, because under the terms which you have just described I already hold an implicit copyright. Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. emv@msen.com Comp.archives is the best thing in the news. Bob Smart