Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!hadron!inco!mack
From: mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: compilation copyright question
Keywords: poster's rights
Message-ID: <4536@inco.UUCP>
Date: 10 Feb 89 17:09:33 GMT
References: <5982@leadsv.UUCP> <25545@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack)
Organization: McDonnell Douglas-INCO, McLean, VA
Lines: 33

Excerpted without permission under the "Fair Use" provisions of US and
international copyright laws:
In article <25545@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Raspach) writes:
>3) implicit copyrights are on published material. Whether posting to USENET 
>   constitutes 'publishing' it is not known -- there's no legal precedent
>   I'm aware of. And if you ask me, I wouldn't want to bet either way on that
>   issue.
>
>The bottom line: If you post something, you own a copyright to that material.

You're assuming an answer to 3).

If this is correct, then it should be possible for me to sue every site
that receives/transmits this article, since that constitutes copying.
("Yer Honor, the defendants, all 11,000 of 'em, infringed on my abiliity
to make a livelihood by making thousands if not millions of copies of
my postings, which I had planned to collect into a bestseller entitled
_The Collected Postings of David Mack_. Now, I'm a reasonable man, yer
Honor. All I want is a thousand bucks damages from each site.")

If I can't sue, then I must have given up some of my rights by the
act of posting. Which rights?

In the long run, it would be much safer to deal with the net as if
it were a publicly-accessible broadcast medium. 

-- 
Copyright 1989 David W. Mack. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
Any duplication or retransmission of this work by any means,
whether mechanical or electronic, without the prior written
consent of the author is a violation of the applicable national
and international copyright laws and may be prosecuted to 
the fullest extent allowed by those laws. ;-)