Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!bywater!scifi!njs
From: njs@scifi.UUCP (Nicholas J. Simicich)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: The Rape of Usenet
Keywords: The wholesale capturing of Usenet by GEnie
Message-ID: <1034@scifi.UUCP>
Date: 26 Dec 89 03:37:16 GMT
References: <946@crash.cts.com> <1989Dec21.000041.6034@ns.network.com> <1989Dec21.020140.24067@athena.mit.edu> <8912220034.AA09899@sorinc.PacBell.COM>
Reply-To: njs@scifi.UUCP (Nicholas J. Simicich)
Organization: Nick Simicich, Peekskill, NY
Lines: 51

In article <8912220034.AA09899@sorinc.PacBell.COM>
magik@sorinc.PacBell.COM (Darrin A. Hyrup) writes:

 >Technically no. The copyright laws clearly state that if you release
 >your copyrighted material into the public domain, it is no longer
 >copyrighted and can be transferred in any way the recievers see fit.
 >Btw, under the Berne Convention (of which the USA is now a member),
 >you do not have to put a "Copyright (c) 1989", in your original works
 >to have a copyright, but you give up any such rights by putting your
 >works into the public domain. Since the very nature of Usenet
 >dictates that any works that are entered into the net are in the
 >public domain, you would have a hell of a time trying to prove misuse
 >of your information in any court if you tried to sue for violation of
 >your copyright.

Um, er, excuse me, but do you suppose that someone loses copyright by
publishing a book?

I've heard this interesting assertion about stuff posted to Usenet being
automatically placed into the public domain before.  

It is certain that by posting, you are consenting to having your
article widely published, on Usenet.  In fact, you are self
publishing, through the act of posting.  I don't think you've done
anything to void your personal copyright.

Were someone to publish a book titled, "The Collected Wisdom of Darrin
Hyrup", by excerpting all of your Usenet posts, well, that action is
clearly not what you were consenting to by posting, in my opinion.
You might be able to sue and get a cut.

I personally, don't object to GEnie making a profit on connect time.
I object to their compilation copyright.  Normally, when you become a
user of one of these services, you sign an agreement that you will not
publish what you download, and you also agree to their copyright on
what you post.  For example, if someone copied the Atari stuff
wholesale from GEnie and posted it to BIX or Compuserve, GEnie would
probably cut them off and might attempt to recover damages if they
thought they were damaged (but Brad has convinced me that the only
damage to GEnie would be in letting potential users know how bad it is
:-) ).

By posting to Usenet, I'm not consenting to having my postings copied
to a commercial service and placed under compilation copyright.  I
don't think that anyone can construe what I'm doing as posting as such
permission.

But, frankly, I don't think I'd be damaged enough to worry about it.

-- 
Nick Simicich --- uunet!bywater!scifi!njs --- njs@ibm.com (Internet)