chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (09/08/88)
[For folks who didn't see the earlier discussions about this in SF-Lovers, a quick summary. Before I went on vacation, a copyrighted article written by Jack Chalker and re-posted it without permission to SF-Lovers in violation of the copyrights of both that article and OtherRealms.] Here's the final update on the Jack Chalker copyright fiasco. I had the opportunity to discuss it with Jack at Nolacon, and everything seems to have been worked out. Saul Jaffe (moderator of the ARPA side of SF-L) was good enough to not redistribute the violating material to the ARPA digests, so the violation was limited to the USENET group. Jack's position is that since the reposting included his copyright notice it doesn't impact his copyright on the material (it does violate the copyright, but it does not put it in the public domain) so he's happy with the steps that were taken and willing to drop things as they stand. He also points out that the bibliography is available for publication, free, on request. Just ask him (if you want to contact him, you can do it through me). The reasons he has it copyrighted are: o He wants to know where it's being published. o He wants to guarantee that what is being published is what he really said, not what someone else decided to write into his mouth -- this becomes important because there is commentary in that article as well as normal bibliographic information. Since there was a meta-discussion about why someone would copyright a bibliography in the first place (irrelavent to the situation but an interesting discussion) I thought I'd pass along his reasoning. So as far as Jack and I are concerned, the situation is over and the problems resolved as well as they can be. It doesn't obviate the fact that the copyright violation occurred, but everyone's satisfied it didn't do any lasting harm to any of the parties involved. However, the net NEEDS to get its act together and be more careful about stuff like this. Include the standard rhetoric about paying attention to laws and things here -- I won't bore you. On related matters: I've had the OtherRealms fanzine archive-server disabled until I could resolve this issue and decide whether or not the archive-server itself violated copyright (was it really distributing back-issues? Or was it actually republishing?) The question isn't definitively answered and probably won't be any time soon, but because it's distributing the original issues as is rather than individual articles, my feeling (and the feeling of most of the people I've talked to about it) is that it is best defined as a back-issue delivery service. Because of this, I've re-enabled the archive server, and you can now get OtherRealms back issues again. Sorry for any inconveniences this might have caused people. Finally, a couple of quick words about copyrights and OtherRealms. I ran into a number of people at Nolacon who were getting bits and pieces of OtherRealms -- with both the copyright and the my address stripped off of them. Besides the fact that this modification of OtherRealms violates the copyright of the publication (which is a no-no!), stripping off the address meant that those folks who got the modified version had no way of finding me and getting the entire magazine. I'm going to be working with some of these people to try to backtrack to the source of their copies (networks can be a royal pain sometimes) but a general comment to people who redistribute OtherRealms elsewhere: If you redistribute it, you must leave the copyright notices AND the my network and mail addresses on each part of the electronic issue. You're welcome to take parts of the issue if you don't want to redistribute the whole thing, but do NOT modify any part of subset the pieces in any way. You can not, for instance, simply take an article, strip the coprights, address or header information. Those are all violations of my copyright, and if I find you doing it, we'll be having words. You may not think this is all very important, but it is. Why? o if I can't guarantee the copyright of my authors, my authors will ask me to not publish their works electronically. If I don't publish it electronically you don't get to see it. o if I can't guarantee my own copyrights, the future of OtherRealms on the net is put in doubt. If I can't protect my work on the net, I'll have to protect it by pulling it. This is something I'd much rather avoid. o if you strip off the identifying information, the people who get it after you may inadvertantly violate copyright. That puts them AND you at a legal liability. o if you strip the address information, people who want to get ahold of me for submissions or subscriptions can't. You may have saved yourself a thousand bytes or so, but you cause problems to the people who get it from you later. Please. OtherRealms is a service I give the net happily. But if it gets screwed up by others, I'll have to protect it and myself. I want to avoid this, because nobody wins. I'm going to be rewording and copyrights and re-arrannging the next issue of the electronic OtherRealms to make this more explicit, but if people use a little common sense we can avoid problems. To everyone I met in New Orleans, thanks! It was a jazz to sit and talk to the folks who read OtherRealms -- the feedback and friendship makes the work more than worthwhile! chuq editor/publisher, OtherRealms Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ Editor/Publisher, OtherRealms