Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!texsun!convex!hamrick@convex.COM
From: hamrick@convex.COM (Ed Hamrick)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Copyrights on Usenet Articles
Message-ID: <4198@convex.UUCP>
Date: 22 Dec 89 04:52:49 GMT
References: <946@crash.cts.com> <1989Dec21.000041.6034@ns.network.com> <45061@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Sender: news@convex.UUCP
Reply-To: hamrick@convex.COM (Ed Hamrick)
Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Seattle, WA
Lines: 60

In article <45061@bu-cs.BU.EDU> ckd@bu-pub.bu.edu (Christopher Davis) writes:
>
>This article, excluding quoted text, is Copyright 1989 Chris Davis.
>Redistribution for profit is prohibited.  This copyright statement shall
>not be construed to limit non-profit distribution, including but not
>limited to UUNET's news forwarding services.  This article may not be
>gatewayed to GEnie without a license fee paid to the author.
>

I've been noticing similar "Copyright" notices in numerous usenet articles
over the past few months, most of which seem to be in response to the use
of usenet articles "for profit" by various companies, especially GEnie.

There's also been quite a debate about the "rightness/wrongness" of GEnie
having a one-way link from usenet.  I'd like to address the issue of who
"owns" or "controls" the articles that are sent out over usenet, and not
address the issue of the one-way GEnie link.

There appears to be a consensus that the only legal mechanism that can be
used to control the use of usenet articles is the Copyright laws.  I've
never seen any assertions that any other law or regulation applies to
these articles.

There appears to be a commonly held belief that an author of a usenet
article can control the "right to copy an article" by asserting that
an article is "Copyright 1989 John Doe", and that the article may be
copied/redistributed under certain limited circumstances.  On the
surface, this seems to be a perfectly acceptable practice, and is used
in many computer journals (see ACM journals as an example).

There are several problems I see in trying to extend this practice to
articles deliberately transmitted to usenet:

1) Anything printed with copyrighted materials is generally sold,
   not given away.  It seems doubtful that a judge would award damages
   under the Copyright laws to someone who gives away tens of thousands
   of copies of their works to the public (and then claims economic
   damage from someone making a few hundred more copies and selling them).

2) Someone who transmits an article to usenet knows that everything
   they send is automatically sent to any site connected to usenet.
   It seems doubtful that damages would be awarded to someone who
   claims economic damage from something they themselves caused (the
   transmission of their copyrighted materials to all connected
   usenet sites).

The following is an example of why I believe that copyright notices
embedded within usenet articles aren't worth the paper they're printed on:

This article, excluding quoted text, is Copyright 1989 Ed Hamrick.
Permission to copy and redistribute this article is granted provided
it is printed on yellow paper, stored on 160 KByte floppy diskettes,
or displayed on DEC VT102 terminals.

I believe that this somewhat absurd paragraph (apologies to Christopher Davis)
illustrates that there is not an unlimited right to assert rights under
the Copyright laws for automatically distributed usenet messages.

Regards,
Ed Hamrick