mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch) (06/27/86)
In article <6852@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes: > > The question is not whether the articles are "published" (they are) > > but whether they are in the public domain. > > Right so far. > > > Material that is published > > without copyright notice, and without evidence that the copyright > > notice was inadvertantly omitted, is in the the public domain. > > Please check with a copyright lawyer before doing anything rash. This is > NOT TRUE in some countries, and I believe the US joined the club a few > years ago. > [...] [L]eaving off the notice no longer puts material into the > public domain. I know this is true in Canada; I believe the recent > changes in US copyright law make it true in the US as well. My apologies; I often forget that this is an international forum, and should have stated that my remarks were limited to US law. In any case, I'm about three years behind in copyright law developments, which is when I left law practice, and I departed from my usual refusal to shoot from the hip in giving free legal advice on Usenet. Anyway, I'm proceeding from the language of 17 USC 405, part of the US Copyright Act of 1976, which took effect in 1978. The upshot of section 405 is that the only exceptions that prevent you from losing copyright protection in a work if it is published without a copyright notice are: (paraphrased) 1. You've omitted the notice from relatively few distributed copies of the work; 2. You register the work within five years of publication, and make a resonable attempt to add notices to all copies after the omission is discovered; or 3. Somebody else distributes copies without the notice, in violation of an agreement not to do so. Section 405(b) holds "innocent infringers" who rely on the lack of a copyright notice in making copies generally free of liability, with some exceptions. Section 405(c) says that you don't lose your copyright if somebody removes or obliterates your copyright notice. The confusion Henry brought up may have arisen because copyright doctrine holds that copyright exists when the work is first "born", rather than needing to be conferred by registration, publication with notice, etc. Nevertheless, you LOSE your rights when you then publish the work without notice. The bottom line for Usenetters is that unless section 405 is no longer good law (repealed, amended, or limited by court interpretation, which is entirely possible, since I no longer have a law library to check this out in) people can safely assume that Usenet articles published without notice of copyright are likely to be in the public domain, UNDER US LAW. I've cross-posted this to net.legal, and directed followups there. Michael C. Berch ARPA: mcb@lll-tis-b.ARPA UUCP: {ihnp4,dual,sun}!lll-lcc!styx!mcb