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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.space
Subject: Re: Article on USENET in the for-real press
Message-ID: <6852@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Jun-86 17:20:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.6852
Posted: Tue Jun 24 17:20:46 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Jun-86 17:20:46 EDT
References: <1463@brl-smoke.ARPA> <109@ora.UUCP>, <20702@styx.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 21
Summary: (Essentially all) Usenet articles are NOT public domain

> The question is not whether the articles are "published" (they are)
> but whether they are in the public domain.

Right so far.

> Material that is published
> without copyright notice, and without evidence that the copyright
> notice was inadvertantly omitted, is in the the public domain.

Please check with a copyright lawyer before doing anything rash.  This is
NOT TRUE in some countries, and I believe the US joined the club a few
years ago.  In those countries, copyright is implicitly present even in
the absence of the notice.  Copyright notices are still usually used,
partly to be more emphatic and partly because not all countries recognize
this rule.  But leaving off the notice no longer puts material into the
public domain.  I know this is true in Canada; I believe the recent
changes in US copyright law make it true in the US as well.
-- 
Usenet(n): AT&T scheme to earn
revenue from otherwise-unused	Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
late-night phone capacity.	{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry