alancz@ix.netcom.com (Alan Czarnek) writes:
>Suppose you are particpating in a particularly profound group
>discussion and one member takes the posts from the group, including
>your verbatim messages, and publishes them in book form. The book
>becomes a best seller and the person who took all your work makes
>millions, and you get nothing.
>That might be OK with you, but if that happened to me, I would be
>steamed. As far as I am concerned, that would be theft, and that is
>why we have copyright laws.
It would absolutely *be* theft. By the Berne Convention, unless you
explicitly renounce copyright you own the reproduction right on everything
you write. I don't know a mailing list which requires you to explicitly
renounce copyright.
However, I don't think your ownership of copyright permits you to pull
back items off the list. You've given a copy to the group for the groups
reading pleasure. The copyright prevents the group from re-using the
writing for other purposes, but the group itself can keep its copies.
The key question w/r/t archive is `group'. Is the group the members of
the list at the time you sent it, or all past, present and future members
of the list? Until this issue goes to court it'll be an open question.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, ya-da, ya-da.
--
Rep. Steve Largent, R-Okla. "No culture that has ever embraced
homosexuality has ever survived." Steve, no culture has ever survived.
They all decline and fall. Homosexuality somehow stays with the human
race, though. -- Rob Morse, San Francisco Herald-Examiner
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