Maybe someone can help me understand something here.  I don't
understand how copyright and legal issues get involved at all.

> Anyway, as I understand it, if someone used part of one of my posts
> outside of the list, then I could sue them in U.S. court.

What would you sue them _for_?  I don't mean the category, I mean what
redress would you be looking for?  (And I don't mean to ask only David
here; this is just an example.)

What _use_ could someone make (let's say of this post I'm writing
right now) somewhere else, and in what recompensible way would I be
damaged if someone _used_ these words?

I can see someone pasting, say, that last paragraph into some other
document on some other list and ignoring the fact that I said it
first. Unless it were something I could imagine profiting by from
having said it first, how have I been damaged? (Even if I could
imagine selling it to the _New Yorker_ it's hard for me to take the
next step an imagine a court accepting my valuation of it.)

Or they could _quote_ me as having said it.  So? I've heard people say
they want someone quoting them to get permission: sure, that makes
sense, but it seems to me an ethical issue at most -- more likely,
simply social, and good sense. But hardly a legal issue. No one _ever_
asks my permission to quote something I've published, and the only
difference here is that on a list, where it's not edited and
re-edited, maybe I misspoke myself or changed my mind or said
something in the heat of the moment that I'd prefer not to have to
stand behind.  Even so -- there are published articles from my early
career that I'm real uncomfortable with now, but I don't expect a
reader of the 1976 volume of _College English_ to track me down and
get permission.

So it'd be nice if someone asks about quoting a Web posting, or an
article from my Web page with a "please do not quote without
permission" notice at the top.  But my guess would be if I called a
lawyer when I found my paragraph out there on POODLE-L without
permission, she'd say, "OK, what dollar amount are we going after, and
how are we going to substantiate the harm?"

I'd go even farther than Doug Winship says,

> "But, of course, some of this doesn't necessarily have to do with
> copyright, but with contract and/or privacy laws (or just common
> decency)."

Wait, maybe I need to have asked his permission . . .

-- Russ

Russell Hunt
Department of English
St. Thomas University
http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/