mcb@eris.berkeley.edu (Michael C. Berch) (09/05/88)
In article <13844@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes: > If you are referring to surface mail, **copyright** is maintained by > the sender. The recipient *owns* the mail, but absolutely zero rights > to publish it any form--and those rights are what copyright is all about > in the first place. The letter is *born* copyrighted; there is no need > for any explicit (C) kind of indications. Righto. The technical reason for this is that the letter is *not published*. There is a body of jurisprudence about exactly what constitutes "publication" for copyright (and for libel/slander) purposes; the criteria for publication include the number of intended recipients, whether the author *intended* to keep the communication private (shown by direct or circumstantial evidence), the means of communication, etc. So a letter sent via sealed first class mail from one individual to another is undoubtedly unpublished (and the author retains intellectual property rights to it), unless the author can be shown to have implicitly "published" the letter, as in including a statement like "feel free to redistribute this". On the other hand, a form letter sent to thousands of recipients who are not personally known to the author may well be construed to have been published, and the latter would pass into the public domain if the author did not affix notice of copyright. On the other hand, as I have tried to point out here and there, the *information* contained in private mail is NOT protected by copyright law, merely the fixed embodiment of the idea in particular prose. (It may be protected from disclosure by trade secret law, by previous agreeement of the parties, by a fiduciary relationship, or by other law [e.g., classified information].) So if Dr. Weemba writes me a letter in which he asserts that, say, the Military Governor of Fredonia is a pinhead, I am perfectly free to report that fact to others. Michael C. Berch Member of the California Bar mcb@eris.berkeley.edu / mcb@tis.llnl.gov / ucbvax!eris!mcb