pokey@well.UUCP (Jef Poskanzer) (06/10/89)
In the referenced message, cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell) wrote: }In article <3740021@eecs.nwu.edu> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: }}While I do not dispute your right to establish or operate a computer network, }}I do dispute the propriety of taking the submissions of others, without }}their consent, and using them in a for-profit media outside the Usenet }}community. } }Indeed --- as you mention later, this would seem to be a straightforward }violation of the copyrights of the authors of the various messages. My interpretation is a little different. Among the rights implicitly granted when someone posts to Usenet is certainly the right to redistribute. Geoff has as much right to redistribute Telecom Digest as anyone else on the net, and if the Telecom Digest moderator says differently, he is wrong. If Geoff can con his recipients into paying $60 / month for what they can get elsewhere for free, good for him. However, it seems to me that those recipients are just as free to redistribute the messages as anyone else. So for example, I might pay Geoff the $60 / month and then re-sell his feed to 20 other sites for only $10 / month. Compilation copyright, you say? It is reasonable for the Telecom Digest and rec.humor.funny to claim a compilation copyright, since articles appear in them with the implicit permission of the authors. Geoff, on the other hand, can claim a compilation copyright all he wants, but he won't be able to make it stick since most of the authors he is compiling won't even know he exists. I fail to see how Geoff expects to stay in business. Note the important difference between what Geoff proposes and what Brad proposes: Brad will be adding new information, for example the newswires. Brad can place whatever redistribution restrictions he likes on this new information. Other issue: editing someone's message without their consent is, of course, inexcusable. --- Jef Jef Poskanzer pokey@well.sf.ca.us {ucbvax, apple, hplabs}!well!pokey "The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain." -- G. Fitch