On Mon, 28 Aug 1995, Lazlo Nibble wrote:
> > If people don't want their material publicly disseminated, they should
> > avoid posting it to the Internet.
>
> In my opinion, this is a cop-out. Copyright law covers electronic media just
> like it covers any other medium. The fact that something is available on the
> Usenet or the Internet doesn't mean you have the right to do anything you
> like with it.
Well, there's an interesting twist - since NNTP is a system where
unlimited copying is how things work, by posting to usenet you implicitly
are saying "this thing can be copied everywhere". This came up when
Walnut Creek was selling usenet cdroms. I don't know if there's
ever been any actual U.S. legal decision in this issue, but it seems like
those who claim that their posts to usenet can't be dupicated and passed
around IN THEIR ORIGINAL FORM AND CONTEXT don't have much of a leg to
stand on.
Now, hosting content on a WWW site might be different, since putting
content there does not imply "copy this wherever", it implies "always
access this central site". Proxy caches muddle that a little, but only a
little.
Brian
Follow-Ups:
References:
|
|
