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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!texsun!texbell!vector!attctc!rissa
From: rissa@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (Patricia O Tuama)
Newsgroups: news.misc,misc.legal
Subject: Re: Copyrights on Usenet Articles
Message-ID: <10907@attctc.Dallas.TX.US>
Date: 9 Jan 90 11:43:26 GMT
Followup-To: news.misc
Organization: Lone Star Cafe
Lines: 23

In article <9001070301.AA10109@sorinc.UUCP> pacbell.PacBell.COM!sorinc!magik writes:
>To begin with, as of last year, much of this is moot, since the U.S.A. is
>now a member of the Berne convention, so all works now carry a copyright
>regardless of this is stated or not.

Not necessarily, remember the US only adopted part of the Berne 
Convention rules, not the entire package.  To be safe, writers et
al need to continue copyrighting everything they produce.

>held in court) that your act of submitting the article places it in the
>public domain at least as far as distribution goes, as you are purposefully
>making the article available for unrestricted public access all over the
>world.

The act of posting an article to a public network or BBS is what 
puts it the public domain, not the distribution of the article.

>out there. A judge would likely suggest that if you do not want users of
>for-profit sites to have access to your message, that you should not submit
>it to the network at all.

Indeed.  And if you're at all concerned about keeping the rights to
something in particular that you have written, then don't post it.