jcb@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Julian Bradfield) (10/25/88)
Would some of you experts care to comment on the position of Usenet articles originating outside the United States? For those of us in the civilized world, the previous debate is irrelevant, since everything I write is copyright in the United Kingdom the moment it's written. But, what, under U.S. law, is the status of my foreign-produced articles that are imported to the U.S.A. by the news mechanism? The general tenor of U.S. law used to be that foreigners don't have any rights if they let their work into the U.S., but I thought you were moving towards the Berne convention rules. (You might keep the discussion here, since misc.legal doesn't go to Europe.)
msa@clinet.FI (Markku Savela) (10/29/88)
In article <879@etive.ed.ac.uk> jcb@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Julian Bradfield) writes: >Would some of you experts care to comment on the position of Usenet >articles originating outside the United States? ... And what about the status of Usenet articles here in Europe? Some local people advocate the idea, that the local Unix Interest groups (EUUG, FUUG,...) have some kind of monopoly (copyright) on all usenet material transported to Europe? The local organization *HAS* the right to have some control over the material, because they are paying to get it here. I'm very greatful of this service provided and I hope the service continues. But, if I were to get my own contact to US, nobody should be able to complain? Or is there really an agreement between backbones, that they won't accept any other links except the "official" mcvax? Once more, I must stress that the current service is most likely very hard to beat. Costs would run too high for just few nodes. But, in principle it should be possible to do, right? Who owns news articles? -- Markku Savela, msa@clinet.fi
keld@freja.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen) (11/01/88)
I am not sure about the legal copyright protection of a non-U.S.A. article distributed in the U.S.A. f.i. by news. But take the news example, the article would be considered "published" as it (normally) reaches U.S.A. within 30 days and the reader (news-reader) is anonymious to the author. I am not sure at all if news articles are considered "published" - but I assume they are. Then the non-U.S.A. article is considered published in the USA, and thus you have to follow ordinary USA copyright rules to protect your work. That is write "Copyright 1988 by Keld Simonsen" for instance.