On 4/9/2010 12:49 AM, LDosser wrote:
"Morris Dovey" wrote in message
...
On 4/8/2010 9:57 PM, Bill wrote:
"Morris wrote in message
...
On 4/8/2010 12:04 PM, Bill Leonhardt wrote:

Take heed and make a permanent copy of the valuable things you find.

If it looks like it has value, steal it?

I think the sentiments were to keep things from becoming lost...as the
publisher would probably would have liked.

And so before the author has a chance to expire, you would steal his
work - just in case he made no provision for its continued publication?

It's theft, and it honors no one.


If you don't want it copied, then copyright it.

He does. So do you. By law in the United States, anything you write is
automatically copyrighted. Your kids' first scribblings are
copyrighted. No action is required. Some additional rights accrue if
you _register_ the copyright, however that is not necessary for a valid
copyright to exist. Everything you or I post to USENET is copyrighted
and if something you posted showed up in a bestseller sometime without
your prior permission being obtained you would probably be able to
collect damages.

On the other hand, quoting on USENET almost certainly falls under "fair
use", and unless somebody has profited significantly from unauthorized
use of your post the chance of obtaining damages sufficient to pay your
legal fees is pretty much zero.

If you don't want it
copied for Personal use, don't put it on a public web site.

Copying for "personal use" is in any case not necessarily precluded by
copyright, depending on what exactly you are copying and on the nature
of the "personal use"--it comes under "fair use" and "fair use" is a
minefield for both the holder of the copyright and the person making the
copy, because it's almost all case law and there's a lot of it, some of
which is probably contradictory.