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From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Shareware? Hah!
Message-ID: <16886@think.UUCP>
Date: 17 Feb 88 23:23:32 GMT
References: <4815@ihlpg.ATT.COM> <3343@killer.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@sauron.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 45

In article <3343@killer.UUCP> davidg@killer.UUCP (David Guntner) writes:
>One note:  Do NOT under any circumstance upload it to Compu$pend - I have heard
>that they have this weird idea that they hold the copywrite on ALL material
>that comes from their system, including things which users have uploaded!

I remember when this was being discussed last year, and I think you
are overreacting.  Compuserve claims what is known as a "compilation
copyright".  They don't copyright any individual item, but they
copyright the collection as a whole.  This is analogous to an
anthology of short stories that have been previously published
separately -- the stories are still copyright to the original
publishers, but no one else can publish that particular collection of
stories.  In general, I think this also covers very similar
collections (i.e. you wouldn't be able to get around the copyright by
making a new collection that has all but one of the original stories).
So, what Compuserve doesn't allow is for someone else to download a
large portion of their library and then make this available to others.
For example, a user group can't just download the entire Compuserve
library and make enough copies for all the members.  It's easy to see
why they would be against this: a significant portion of Compuserve's
revenue comes from people being online to download files; if one
person does the downloading and then gives away copies for the price
of the media then Compuserve is losing revenue.

If Compuserve thinks they hold the copyright on any contributed
material they are wrong.  As soon as you write something you hold the
copyright on it, until you do something that causes you to lose it
(such as selling the copyright to a publisher, or placing it in the
public domain).  If you are smart enough to put an explicit copyright
notice in the text then it would be difficult for anyone else to
succeed in claiming the copyright.

[P.S. Why do so many people have much trouble spelling copyright?  The
definition of "copyright" is "the right to copy", so why do people
think that the spelling changes when you combine it into one word?
One day one of you is going to get screwed when a misspelled copyright
notice fails to hold up in court (actually, I think it pretty unlikely
that a court would be so picky).]


Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
uunet!think!barmar