Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!maytag!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: The Rape of Usenet
Keywords: The wholesale capturing of Usenet by GEnie
Message-ID: <67657@looking.on.ca>
Date: 27 Dec 89 03:51:55 GMT
References: <946@crash.cts.com> <1989Dec21.000041.6034@ns.network.com> <1989Dec21.020140.24067@athena.mit.edu> <8912220034.AA09899@sorinc.PacBell.COM> <1034@scifi.UUCP>
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 78
Class: discussion

In article <1034@scifi.UUCP> njs@scifi.UUCP (Nicholas J. Simicich) writes:
>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

People misunderstand compilation copyright.  It doesn't stop you from
doing anything with the original postings, or original sub-collections,
that you could do before.  Posting a PD or Shareware program on GEnie
doesn't change one whit your right o put it on USENET, compuserve or
(if you're the owner or it's PD) doing whatever you want with it.

With USENET postings on GEnie or CIS, the compilation copyright would
have no bearing on the collection known as USENET.  It could not
interfere in any way with the feeding of USENET via other machines.
There is a technical, but rather silly and unlikely way it could be
used to stop people getting a USENET feed *from* GEnie, but I can't
imagine it taking place.

Compilation copyright protects one thing and one thing only -- the
unique effort of compiling and editing the collection.

CIS's compilation copyright stops you from taking CIS's IBM-PC library,
downloading a sizeable portion of it, and setting up your own online
service, BBS or library with the same library.   And individual program
you get from any other source that happens to be on CIS you can do with
as you please (within the limits of the real copyright holder's rules.)

If you build an Online service and/or a library of shareware/PD material,
and a lot of effort is spent in making it, you deserve protection for that
effort.  It should not be legal for somebody to start up a competitor,
and just blatently copy the library you have developed in years of operation.

That's all it means.

>(but Brad has convinced me that the only
>damage to GEnie would be in letting potential users know how bad it is
>:-) ).

That's not what I said at all, by the way.  GEnie has lots of great
areas.  But the way discussion works there is not strictly compatible
with USENET, because E-mail is discouraged and private messages on the
BB section are not uncommon.  This would not mesh well with USENET without
a bit of work.

>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.

This is a more gray area, but in my opinion, this is incorrect.  (This has
never been decided by case-law, however.)   You post to USENET, and you
are consenting to both of the following:
	a) What is generally expected for a USENET posting, namely very
	   wide electronic distribution to many thousands of sites at
	   companies, schools, and BBoards, including what is often
	   called USENET, BITNET, Internet, DEC E-NET and related nets
	b) Any automated electronic distribution, commercial or otherwise,
	   that was set in place prior to your posting.

If the law does *not* rule B to be the case, then it has to deal with
problems like messages that contain things like:

	"This message is copyright 1852 by Foo Enterprises.  Permission
	 is granted to copy this message by all sites with a site name
	 beginning with a vowel.  Any site whose name begins with a
	 consonant may not copy this message in any form for profit or
	 otherwise."

If an automatic link's in place, then YOU the poster are the one using
it to copy your message, *not* the owners of the link.

-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473