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
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