From: utzoo!decvax!cca!dee
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: Massive copyright violations on the net
Article-I.D.: cca.3856
Posted: Wed Dec  8 10:51:35 1982
Received: Thu Dec  9 03:24:09 1982
References: unc.4367

(1) The original text might have been in the public domain.  If it had
no copyright notice and was found in a context were you do not have
other reason to believe the author wished to protect it, I don't believe
it is any crime to distribute it.

(2) If it was copyright and you distribute it without a copyright
notice, then you are also nudging it into the public domain and might be
liable for damages for that reason as well.  Thus being sure that you
distribute it with a copyright notice is almost certain to reduce your
liability.

(3) I don't believe a node on the network commits a crime in case 1
above.  Even if a message does have a copyright notice, the messages are
not normally examined at each node and the net is just a transmission
medium.  It is not clear that sending news is difference from publishing
a lot of copies and mailing them to all news recipients, at least from
the point of view of copyrights.  Thus I think the original sending is
the only potential wrong doer here.

(4) Perhaps the ultimate right thing is some machine recognizable form
of the Copyright Clearing Center message you can put on something with
the copyright notice if you want people to be able to easily copy it for
a fee.  This plus electronic funds transfer would be an interesting form
of electronic publication.