Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Changes to the monthly postings (for rec.humor.funny)
Message-ID: <371@twwells.uucp>
Date: 3 Feb 89 06:35:08 GMT
References: <2706@looking.UUCP> <2844@epimass.EPI.COM> <1448@vsi1.COM>
Reply-To: bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells)
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(Hey, Brad, correct me if I have any of this wrong.)

In article <1448@vsi1.COM> lmb@vicom.COM (Larry Blair) writes:
: Here, here!  Brad sure has become proprietary with OTHER people's work.
: The purpose of moderation is to keep the newsgroup focused, and, in the
: case of r.h.f, limit the volume and set a minimum standard for postings.
: Brad has NO ownership rights unless he copyrights the material, which
: would be pretty funny since it's not his creation.

He does have a copyright. Read his monthly posting for the details.
The copyright is for the compilation, not the contents.  In other
words, though he generally has no copyright on the material contained
in the newsgroup, he does have a copyright on the collection of
material, a thing that would not exist save for his effort.  Such
copyrights are perfectly normal for the kind of thing he does.  As I
understand it, every moderated newsgroup has such a copyright (though
the distribution of the newsgroup without the copyright notice voids
the copyright), even if the moderator(s) don't know it. Brad does,
and has made that explicit.

: I supported Brad during the last recall drive.  I'm beginning to think
: I made a mistake.  R.h.f needs a moderator, not some sort of propagation
: Nazi.

Do y'all know the purpose of that bullshit?  It is not to prevent
anyone from reading the newsgroup, it is to cover his ass in the
event that some JEDR comes along and tries to sue him or censor the
newsgroup.

Because of him saying what he does, there are two legal possibilities:
if the offended party hasn't obtained his permission he gets thrown
out of court. If he has, then he has agreed to the bullshit, and gets
thrown out of court. End of problem.

BTW, it is clear from Brad's posting that he doesn't like this
bullshit any better than you do.

---
Bill
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