Dear Eric, The information contained in Brad Templeton's article on the URL cited below contradicts your observation that a copyright must be added to each individual message. Each message written today *is already copyrighted* whether or not the notice is included. The URL is: http://www.clari.net/brad/copymyths.html I'm extracting the relevant portion to include in this message (as well as his permission to do so which is also included in his article) > ClariNet * Brad Templeton Home Page * Copyright Myths > > 10 Big Myths about copyright explained > > By Brad Templeton > > An attempt to answer common myths about copyright seen on the net > and cover issues related to copyright and USENET posting. > > 1) "If it doesn't have a copyright notice, it's not copyrighted." > > This was true in the past, but today almost all major nations follow > the Berne copyright convention. For example, in the USA, almost > everything created privately after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted and > protected whether it has a notice or not. The default you should > assume for other people's works is that they are copyrighted and may > not be copied unless you know otherwise. There are some old works > that lost protection without notice, but frankly you should not risk > it unless you know for sure........ > > Permission is granted to freely copy this document in electronic > form, or in print if you're not selling it. If you had not seen a > notice like this on the document, you would have to assume you did > not have permission to copy it. This document is still protected by > you-know-what even though it has no copyright notice. > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > Eric's message........... > Both appear on all messages in the digest, for different reasons. The top > banner is intended to carry copyright statements, legal warnings, and the > like. We had customers who simply couldn't have used the software without > this capability. In most cases this would be just a one-liner. Lawyers > don't want to take chances so this has to appear on every individual > message. Otherwise if you extracted one message from the digest in good > faith it would not have the copyright, and what if you then resent it, > who would be to blame, and what if you're using a mail program that > automatically bursts digests, blah blah blah. I don't think this is a big > problem since the top banner gets in the way of reading the text you're > actually interested in, so you want to keep it short anyway, and if it's > just 1-2 lines it is no big deal if it appears on every single message, > even if it's not a copyright that you do have to have on every message. Regards, Marianne Marianne Brosseau [log in to unmask]>