mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) (02/16/89)
In article <25731@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >Well, yes I am. I'm assuming that in a court of law, USENET would be held to >be a common carrier (i.e. that the distribution medium is passive and can >not be held liable for the content, since USENET sites doesn't have any control >over the content. Instead the post (and/or the posting site) would be the >point of control and legally liable). It would be great if a court could be convinced that a system composed of 11,000 odd computers passing traffic sequentially is passive. However, I wonder what they would make of the fact that the transmission technique involves making permanent (or at least static) copies of each message at each relay point. > Common carrier status is the most >likely format for USENET, since otherwise that would imply that every site >had to approve every article before forwarding to protect itself legally -- >not close to practical. I'm not sure that a "practicality" argument would bear much weight in court. It's clearly desireable to have USENET considered a common carrier, but if a court someday decides that it isn't... >>If I can't sue, then I must have given up some of my rights by the >>act of posting. Which rights? > >Well, your copyright message notwithstanding (of which excerpts above are >quoted under the fair use precepts of copyright law, so I'm covered (nyah)) >you posted the message to the network with the knowledge that, copyright >message notwithstanding, it'd be distributed automatically without sites >checking for the copyright and getting your permission. Since you posted the >message knowing that the copyright would be violated, a good case would be >made that you had to know the copyright was unenforceable and therefore by >posting anyway you gave an implicit right to redistribute and the >unenforceable parts of the copyright are invalid. OK, let me take another approach on this. Suppose that I print out verbatim copies of every issue of OtherRealms that you've posted, make about 10,000 copies of each, and start selling them for $1 each at SF Cons. Have I violated your copyright? (I'm assuming that OR contains a copyright notice - I don't have any issues on my system to look at right now.) If you sue me for copyright violation, I will argue that, by making OR available to an unlimited audience at no cost to them, you have effectively put OR into the public domain. I have deprived neither you nor your contributors of income, since everyone I sold a copy to could have had a copy for nothing by joining the USENET. (Note that I'm talking about the electronic version only, not the "real" illustrated OtherRealms.) If I get away with this, it means that everything posted to the net is in the public domain, regardless of any copyright notices included in the articles, and the argument that everything posted to the net has an implicit copyright is spurious. I'm crossposting this to misc.legal just to annoy everyone. -- Dave the Litigious Copyright 1989 David W. Mack. All Rights Reserved Worldwide, except First Viewing Rights which are granted to all USENET sites operational on or before Feb. 15, 1989. This work may be viewed by users at the aforementioned sites an unlimited number of times but may not be transferred to non-magnetic media. Or I'll sue your ass off. :-)