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From: KFL@ai.ai.mit.edu (Keith F. Lynch)
Newsgroups: net.legal
Subject: Copyright question
Message-ID: <1757@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 12-Mar-86 20:20:03 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.1757
Posted: Wed Mar 12 20:20:03 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Mar-86 18:58:27 EST
Sender: news@brl-smoke.ARPA
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  Suppose I wanted to market a spelling checker.  For this I need a
list of all common words.  I have been wondering where I can get one
for free and with no copyright restrictions.
  It occurred to me that if I were to go through many megabytes of
mailing list archives and seperate out all the words, put them in
order, removing duplicates, manually filtering out hostnames, personal
names, and misspelled words, I would have a file useful for spelling
checking, text compression, and text encryption.
  My question is, is this legal?  I am not sure whether the archives
are copyrighted or not, but even if they are, individual words
stripped out and seperated from all context surely aren't, right?
  Please reply to me, I am not on this list.
								...Keith