At 09:59 AM 1/3/97 CST, you wrote:
>On smaller list of list owners, we've been having a discussion about
>some companies which do their own list archiving.  For the most part,
>the companies that do this have been polite and asked permission first.
>However, some list owners have declined, saying that the posts are
>copyrighted material of the posters.
 
 
I'm not a lawyer, but.....as a librarian who has to keep up on such....and
of course this is a USA oriented answer.
 
Under current copyright law, anything anyone writes, creates, draws, etc,
is copyrighted BY THE ACT OF CREATION.  Unless you register it, however,
there are some limitations on the damages you may sue for, etc.
 
On my lists the msgs have always been archived by listserv, and most of the
lists are also available on bit.listserv.* echoes, so they've always been
archived there by various CDROM services, DejaNews, etc.  Therefore I've
always approved these various private indexing or archiving services.  Why
should it be a problem for one more place to archive the great wisdom of
the ages that crosses my lists?  [insert sarcastic smiley here]
 
Sure, someone could make improper use of a message, not cite it in their
research paper, appropriate the ideas (which aren't copyrightable anyway),
etc.  But I can't imagine anyone bothering in most cases anyway.  And,
unless the author has registered the copyright, he can't collect any
damages (though could sue to stop the other person from claiming the words
were his/hers).
 
Sure the messages are the copyrighted material of the posters.....but once
they're spread around the world, the value of the copyright is essentially
zero UNLESS it has been registered.  And I've never heard of that
happening, though it could.
 
I've got more to do than going around looking for problems.
 
cheers
 
cyclops
 
 
 
 
Dan Lester
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In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king.