How about treating JSmith & IAF.NET with their own medicine: IAF.NET asserts copyright of its compilation of addresses. Well ... they built their compilation by taking -- without consideration or agreement -- the compilations of addresses created/maintained by listowners. It would seem that a listowner might turn assert ownership (copyright that is) of the compiled addresses of list subscribers. Just like IAF. Note that one does not need to explicitly say some creation is copyrighted in order to have a defensible copyright. Then complain to IAF that they've violated the listowner's copyright. this is equivalent to stealing a magazine's subscriber list. I think IAF would be in an awkward position to deny the copyright of a list of addresses since they've created one and are trying to copyright it themselves. Anyway -- you could deny them the use of the list or offer to sell it to them at some more or less prohibitive market value. Thoughts? ___________________________________________________ ____| |____ \ | Jonathan LeBreton Ass't Director, Library | / \ | UMBC = University of Maryland Baltimore County | / \ | "an honors university in Maryland" | / / | [log in to unmask] phone 410-455-2356 | \ / |___________________________________________________| \ /________) (__________\