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 So it'd be nice if someone asks about quoting a Web posting, or an article from my Web page with a "please do not quote without permission" notice at the top.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/