Dear David,
> I don't think Eric is stating that if each message in a digest doesn't
> have a copyright notice, the article isn't copyrighted. Copyright
> notifications *do* have a purpose and many users of LISTSERV (and L-Soft
> client, I presume) *do* want their works to have such a
notice.
I may have misunderstood Eric's intentions but the
impression that I gained from his comments below indicated to me
that this was what he intended to convey by his remarks:
"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
" even if it's not a copyright that you do have to have on every
message."
As Templeton's article indicates, there is no necessity
for each message to have a copyright notice, and no blame can be
incurred by a list owner who does not add one to each message in
a digest.
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.
It is true that I omitted the additional comments you
mentioned below (and a great deal more which did not
appear relevant to the point under discussion.....which is why
I included the URL so that others could read the article in its entirety)
It is true that it can be *useful* to include a copyright
notice, but as indicated in Templeton's article..." it is not
necessary. "
If the issue is simply one of 'necessary additions' which is the
implication that I perceived from Eric's posting, then the
response is appropriate.
If the issue is one of 'possible additions' then
your additional info is relevant.
But there *is* a very substantial and critical difference
between the two as Templeton's article clearly indicates.
In short, list owners *can* add anything they desire to an
individual message or to each digest as a whole regarding
copyright, but that it is *not required* that they do either.
Regards,
Marianne
> You
> omitted the following paragraph from the material you quoted from
> <URL:http://www.clari.net/brad/copymyths.html> which explains this:
>
> It is true that a notice strengthens the protection, by warning people,
> and by allowing one to get more and different damages, but it is not
> necessary. If it looks copyrighted, you should assume it is. This applies
> to pictures, too. You may not scan pictures from magazines and post
> them to the net, and if you come upon something unknown, you shouldn't
> post that either.
>
> Thus, one should not read the document identified above URL and conclude
> that copyright notifications are useless or that to some people, who
> publish via electronic medium, they are determined to be a necessity.
>
> --dwb--
>
> David W. Baker | [log in to unmask] | <URL:http://www.netspace.org/users/dwb/>
>
>
Marianne Brosseau
[log in to unmask]>
|
