Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!artsnet!mgresham
From: mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Procedure for rec.humor.funny debate
Message-ID: <93@artsnet.UUCP>
Date: 11 Feb 89 17:52:08 GMT
References: <2726@looking.UUCP> <7650@chinet.chi.il.us> <2212@van-bc.UUCP>
Reply-To: mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Organization: ARTSNET  Atlanta, GA  USA
Lines: 85

In article <2212@van-bc.UUCP> sl@van-bc.UUCP (pri=-10 Stuart Lynne) writes:
>I don't care what anyone says. Weeding through 10,000 jokes to cull out 500,
>correcting spelling mistakes, corresponding with authors, taking flak,
>drafting ground rules, setting up automated posting software ...... sounds
>like a fair bit of work. 
>
Yet none of those are grounds for claims to copyright.  Likewise
for typing, typesetting, printing, and binding -- all a
fair amount of work; none are grounds for copyright claims.

Now, concerning what has been called in the past "common law
copyright" (since Brad brought that up recently, though not in
those words):
  The notion of "common law copyright" is that the creator of a
work is assumed to be the owner of all copyrights even without
public declaration of them.  What Brad left out of this is that
once the work circulates beyond the immediate control of the
creator, things become quite a bit more complicated, and the
burden is, again, on that person to substantiate any claims to such.
  For example, lets call the creator of a work Person A.  Now if
Person B registers claim to copyright with appropriate
institution, then unless Person A has extremely substantial
evidence to the contrary that he/she is the actual creator of a
work, the copyright will be granted to Person B.
  Another example: If Person A does not declare or register claim
to copyright and there is sufficient public distribution of the
work, generally all claim to copyright is lost and the work is
declared by the court to be in the "public domain".

On the issue of "implicit" understandings, if an author has given
implicit consent to allow a work to be freely distributed by
submitting it to a moderated group such as rec.humnor.funny, then
isn't it also reasonable that a moderator has given implicit
consent that the compilation may be freely distributed by agreeing
to volunteer as a moderator, whether or not he changes his mind in
the course of the activity.  If such an implicit agrement is
violated, it seems reasonable that those who agreed to allowed him to
volunteer can likewise replace him.

I also wonder how such volunteer work relates to the issue of
"work for hire", even though no money has exchanged hands.
In the "work for hire" situation, the creator has given up claim
to copyright to the hiring party or company in exchange for a fee
(reasonable or not :-)).

BTW, I'd like to agree with some statements to the effect that in
no way can any claims to copyright protect anyone from legal
action, civil or criminal, in the areas of libel, slander, or
civel rights violations; it would, instead simply strengthen the
plaintiff's charge of responsibility on the part of the copyright
claimant.  Because of that, I'd rather not see a "Usenet
Collective Trust" or such claiming compilation copyrights (valid
or not) -- as that may make us all subject to liability whether or
not we have *anything* to do with such groups as rec.humor.funny,
which I don't.  I would hate to see the U.S. courts, for example,
subject the entire computer networking community to shelling out
money annually as the result of somje class-action suit.  Don't
think it can be done?  Look at the music record industry.  They
must pay a certain percentage of their receipts to the "Music
Performance Trust Fund" as the result of such a suit.  (I happen
to be in favor of that one, though.)
  Lets leave the copyrights in the hands of the the creators of
individual works and keep as much as is practical in public
domain.  And if someone doesn't want the the results of their
moderating work to be public domain, they need not volunteer.

  Incidentally, regarding services like CompuServe (tm), I don't
think they're going to continue to pose all that much of a threat.
I enrolled for the free examination period, and sent their
processor into an endlessly repeating "stack overflow error" just
by requesting a particular news -- I guess they've just gotten too
big for their BBS :-).  Also their "pay by credit-card or
automatic-bank-withdrawl only" policy is unappetizing to say the
least.  As more people discover and/or create alternatives (many
of their "information services" could be provided by the cable TV
companies as well, if not better) I suspect that they will not have
such an easy time; this is recently evidenced by a big marketing
push on their part (in my estimation, the advertising is greater
than the sum of their services).
  Needless to say, I un-enrolled soon after that before any charges
accrued.

--Mark Gresham
	...gatech!{dscatl!}artsnet!mgresham
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