Meat Plow wrote:
On Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:10:50 -0700, "Jon Danniken"
wrote:

"Meat Plow" wrote:
Whose posts here are protected under international copyright?
Each and every one of them, by the individual contributor(s).

Enforcing the copyright, however, is a whole 'nuther kettle of fish.


Eh sorry you'd have to cite some legal precedence to convince me that
comments posted in a public forum are under some sort of copyright
protection. If that were the case then the posts wouldn't be allowed
to propagate world wide to individual servers without an agreement.
Nor I suppose would I even be allowed to use your post in my reply
without your permission.

The classic reference about Usenet & copyright:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
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3) "If it's posted to Usenet it's in the public domain."
False. Nothing modern and creative is in the public domain anymore
unless the owner explicitly puts it in the public domain(*). Explicitly,
as in you have a note from the author/owner saying, "I grant this to the
public domain." Those exact words or words very much like them.

Some argue that posting to Usenet implicitly grants permission to
everybody to copy the posting within fairly wide bounds, and others feel
that Usenet is an automatic store and forward network where all the
thousands of copies made are done at the command (rather than the
consent) of the poster. This is a matter of some debate, but even if the
former is true (and in this writer's opinion we should all pray it isn't
true) it simply would suggest posters are implicitly granting
permissions "for the sort of copying one might expect when one posts to
Usenet" and in no case is this a placement of material into the public
domain. It is important to remember that when it comes to the law,
computers never make copies, only human beings make copies. Computers
are given commands, not permission. Only people can be given permission.
Furthermore it is very difficult for an implicit licence to supersede an
explicitly stated licence that the copier was aware of.

Note that all this assumes the poster had the right to post the
item in the first place. If the poster didn't, then all the copies are
pirated, and no implied licence or theoretical reduction of the
copyright can take place.
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--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
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