Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!oliveb!amdahl!drivax!braun
From: braun@drivax.UUCP (Karl T. Braun (kral))
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Privacy of computer files./Lawsuit
Message-ID: <4058@drivax.UUCP>
Date: 15 Dec 88 19:45:06 GMT
References: <1831@qiclab.UUCP> <6930@pyr.gatech.EDU>
Reply-To: braun@drivax.UUCP (Karl T. Braun (kral))
Organization: Digital Research, Inc.
Lines: 25


I had a talk with our corporate attorney re: copyrights, who owns what, etc.

It seems that the rules are changing.  Currently, if you don't explicitly state
a copyright, then your ownership is questionable.  However, according to a law
signed by Reagan sometime in the last few weeks ("The Berne Act", or some
such), copyright will be implied on all written material.  

Furthermore, he says that anything "published" in a public forum, which these
newsgroups certainly are, will be protected by this law, whether or not you
have the copyright notice stated in the article.

Email, which is not a published work, is and has always been the property of
the author.  As to the status of the work with respect to the machines which
pass along this work and machines on which these works were created, etc, I'm
still looking into that.

Stay tuned...


-- 
kral 	408/647-6112			...{ism780|amdahl}!drivax!braun
"To surrender is to remain in the hands of barbarians for the rest of my life;
 To fight is to leave my bones exposed in the desert waste" 
		- ancient chinese poem