mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) (02/07/89)
I'm amazed at how far the debate over Brad's new "license" has
escalated, particularly given the relatively small amount of
information (publicly) available on Brad's intentions.
Brad has incorporated into his Introductory document a set of
conditions which are (to the best of my knowledge) unprecedented
in the history of the net. The appropriate paragraphs are
appended to the end of this posting for reference.
It might help people decide how to deal with this event if
Brad would publicly answer the following questions:
[By commercial sites, I mean those USENET sites that charge their users
for their services.]
1) What action would you take against a commercial USENET site
which carries r.h.f without your permission?
2) Do you plan to ask a royalty from commercial USENET sites
which carry r.h.f with your permission?
3) Do you regard the upstream feeds of commercial sites as
liable for feeding r.h.f to those sites?
4) How would you determine whether a commercial site derives
a substantial part of its income from r.h.f?
5) What is the legal basis for your claim to a compilation
copyright as the moderator of a USENET newsgroup? In
particular, how do you justify describing r.h.f as a
compilation when the postings are published individually?
6) What is the legal basis for your claimed right to control
the propagation of a USENET newsgroup? In particular,
what justification do you have for distinguishing between
commercial and non-commercial sites?
7) Your license states that the right to carry r.h.f is
revokable. Under what conditions would the right be revoked?
What action would you take against a non-commercial USENET
site which ignored notice of revocation of this right?
8) What contractual obligations would you impose on commercial
sites in exchange for permission to carry r.h.f?
9) What legal scenario compelled you to include these conditions
in your Intro posting?
10) In what sense are the individual postings to r.h.f protected
by a compilation copyright? In particular, if I remove the
header and the signature (if any), leaving just the original
joke, would you consider the resultant text to be covered
by your compilation copyright?
11) Does the 2-month time limit on r.h.f postings imply that
*no* site can archive r.h.f?
Please note that this is NOT A FLAME. I want information.
If legal precedents exist, I'd like to know what they are.
-- Dave Mack
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpt from "Introduction to REC.HUMOR.FUNNY -- Monthly Posting"
<2712@looking.UUCP> Date: 2 Feb 89 19:18:12 GMT:
The contents of rec.humor.funny are compilation copyright 1987, 1988,
1989 by Brad Templeton. This means I claim no copyright on the
individual messages, just on the compilation. Individual messages are
the responsibility of the submitters. Messages marked "original" are
the property of their named authors. Fair excerpts of copyrighted works
presented are the property of the attributed real authors and/or their
agents.
A licence is granted to the owners of computer systems on what is
commonly known as USENET to read and/or store this compilation in electronic
form for up to 2 months, and to forward it to other computers on the
USENET network. This licence can be revoked at any time, from any
individual user, site or subnet, whether they are considered to be on
USENET or not. Some sites, most notably those at the University of
Waterloo, have already lost some use of the licence granted above, and
their administrators know who they are. What this means is that if you're
not sure you're on USENET, and you want to forward the group, just ask me.
It's very likely I will say yes. I just want to keep track and keep control.
The above licence is granted only to owners of machines which do not charge
users for the reading of network articles. Machines which charge users
are granted this licence so long as selling access to USENET communications
services is not considered a significant part of the service which is sold.
Other sites must mail me for permission. (ie. Computer centers which sell
general computing and bill out time are OK, pay-to-use public access Unix
and BBS systems must ask permission. If you're not sure, ask.)