Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!world!bzs From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy Subject: Re: Is the Information the User's? (was _RFC on my "abuse"_) Message-ID: Date: 29 Jun 91 02:33:10 GMT References: <1991Jun25.213406.18977@cis.ohio-state.edu> <25.Jun.91.180934.68@cogsci.cog.jhu.edu> <1991Jun26.043640.19539@ms.uky.edu> <1991Jun26.052725.14920@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1991Jun26.134621.15275@ms.uky.edu> That last line is interesting. I don't know much about law, but I've heard >it claimed, at least in Ireland, that copyright exists on something you've >written the moment you write it. So keeping files of writing from a user is >in effect illegal. So should a sysadmin at least give a user whose account >has been suspended some way of retrieving their files, at least hard copies >of them? [Hang on it gets more interesting... Although I agree with the sentiment (don't get me wrong), I think you're making a bit of a leap there. If I wrote a poem on your car I don't think there's much I could do about stopping you from driving off with it. You may own the copyright (preventing me from publishing it) but I doubt there'd be much sympathy if you never provided yourself with a reasonable copy of your own work. It could be argued that this would be more similar to allowing you back in your own office after having been fired to retrieve personal effects, but forget copyright, that only says who may publish your work, basically. It's an interesting argument, but tenuous. You're correct about the automatic copyright, as per the Berne Convention (which the USA is also a signatory to), one no longer has to explicitly put a copyright onto a work for it to be considered copyrighted (note, however, that although such a work is unarguably yours in such a case in the USA at least you would be pretty much limited to cease and desist orders if you found someone using it, unless it's registered you can't (*generally*, this is law, not science) collect monetary damages for misuse. HOWEVER, if you did work on a University (or other workplace) computer there could be claims to that work by the University. It depends on a lot of things which would be hard to go into here. But if it was related to what you were paid for or received grant monies for then ownership could be at least partially in dispute and fear that you would retrieve a copy and then destroy it is, well, it's within the realm of sanity. For example, course notes or exercises could quite legitimately be claimed by the University, assuming you were paid to teach the particular course. ...about here] Unfortunately more than one University has used denial of access to computer files as a way of punishing or trying to force some political concession out of a person. I know of one case where a professor filed a discrimination suit against the university and they immediately removed her access and, hence, access to a book she was writing. And used this to try to leverage a settlement out of her. Needless to say this is one reason personal computers can be very popular around universities, regardless of all the promised convenience of centralized systems. It's not said out loud very often, however. But I bet a lot of you know profs who's only computer they are interested in is the personal computer they keep at home (other than perhaps logging in to a central computer for email etc.) Now you know why. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD