Liz,

Just to add to Ben's remarks, there are a few caveats to this.

Copyright exists at the time that "an idea or thought is put to paper" (meaning, in any "reproducible form"), but the possibility of enforcement exists only after publication ("delivery into the hands of a another person").  This differs from patent protection whereby one can enclose a design in writing in an envelope and mail it to themselves, preferably double-registered, as proof of date of design.  The date of publication of a recorded thought is important.

Copyright is actually a composed of four subsidiary rights.  I can only recall the more prominent two, those which are probably the subject of litigation most often.  The first is the right to benefit financially or similarly from the work, which may be assigned but not "sold", and the second is the "moral" right of the author to exercise unrestricted use of the copyrighted work (of course, that does not bar non-competition clauses).  In Canada, moral rights cannot be bargained away in any fashion, including assignment, directly or indirectly.  This gives the author the right to reproduce his or her works forever, though moral rights terminate with death, as opposed to the others, thus they cannot be passed on to one's heirs or beneficiaries.

Strictly speaking, copyright cannot be assigned, only rights to benefit (exclusively) from it can (see exclusion re: moral rights, above).  So, no matter what an author does, short of agreeing to not exercise their moral right to publish their work, they will not lose their personal ability to use and profit from their work.

In the US, the 1974 Copyright Act was passed, providing restrictions on copyright protections.  Works having no commercial value are excluded from copyright protection, with the exception of literary works reasonably expected to be of commercial value in the future, such as manuscripts, poetry, biographies in progress, etc.  As I think has been mentioned here before, a compilation is copyright, including, for example, not only list posts "as arranged" but list membership rosters.  A compilation of public domain works may be copyright.  For example, a compilation entitled, "A Compilation of Early Twentieth Century Bartenders' Humour", comprised of humour taken totally from the public domain and arranged in some original fashion for publication, would be copyright.

In Canada, it's all copyright.  A private letter is copyright in the hands of the author and right of enforcement is entrenched when a recipient attempts to further republish the letter.  This is often the basic tool employed in preventing one's personal remarks to another from being posted to a website.  There is also an international treaty governing copyright to which both Canada and the US are signatories.

Intellectual property, industrial design, and patents are afforded other protections.  (If you want to see the more ridiculous, review some of the latest patents granted at the US Patent Office.  If you build a child's swing set for the purpose of resale, you are in violation of the law.  The latest on the list of the absurd is "toast"; it was a previously unpatented "process".)

So long as one is acting in their own interest (i.e, not in an employer's), their work (the words, or the compilation of other words, properly procured) is their property, and the copyright law that is applicable is that which governs the jurisdiction in which they are physically situate when putting the idea or thought to paper.

Enhancement of a work, where the work is produced with permission, is copyright in the hands of the party creating the enhancement.  This may play a part wherein a list owner/admin edits a post before forwarding it back to the server for distribution.

In its TOS, Yahoo! Groups provides that all posts are copyright in Yahoo's hands, not by assignment or (unenforceable) sale of copyright, but by creation of copyright in their hands.  I'm not sure that one can bargain away their right of copyright preemptively, and to the extent that the work is written in Canada, certainly not their moral rights.

Liz, a simple search in Google under just the one term will return some very practical websites.

Michael


At 09:41 PM 4/14/02 -0600, Ben Parker wrote:>
>
>I did not mean to imply that the author loses copyright by posting a message
>to a list.  By law, copyright rests with the original author of any work.  As
>long as that author never publishes the work or allows anyone else to see it
>or know of its existence, questions of copyright protection are not
>applicable.  Once the author makes the work public or exposes it to other
>people (for example by posting the work to an e-mail list), then the
>protections of the copyright act can become applicable.  When the author posts
>a message, copyright rests with the original author unless/until they assign
>their rights to someone else.