Re: Subject: Midrange List Guidelines

>  > Just out of curiosity, 
> >  what is the list owner's basis of a copyright claim?
>  > The US Constitution and Title 17 of the United States Code provide
>  > copyrights exclusively to original authors.  Since the list is merely a
>  > compilation of the works of original authors, and lacks any creative
>  > expression of its own, how can the list owner claim any rights?
>  
>  According to my research, compilations are indeed copyrightable
>  (ref: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ1.html#wwp, 3rd paragraph).

I have had a long standing understanding that when we work with COLLECTIONS 
of writings by different people, the COLLECTION also carries some copyright 
weight.  When the collection would not be possible without the contribution 
of some individual, even though that person's contribution is not literary, 
that person does have some rights that are similar to those of the individual 
authors.

In the absense of any other agreements, the standard is
1. Do not copy anything without the permission of the original writer.
2. Do not copy anything without the permission of the person doing the 
collection.

So if there is stuff in a dead tree publication ... you need the permission 
BOTH of the publication AND the individual author.

If you want stuff from some kind of on-line forum, moderated or not ... you 
need the permission BOTH of the forum and of the individual author.

To call what we write on these forums the works of "authors" is I think a bit 
high faluting like calling a Janitor a Sanitary Engineer, but that is my 
understanding of copyright law.

However, often there IS an agreement of some kind.  To join some group we 
agree to the rules of whoever is sponsoring the group, and those rules can 
include copyright.  There are ISPs that offer people free web sites & there 
is a mountain of rules, that we agree to.  The obvious is the advertising.  
Less obvious is that what we post there is intellectual property that might 
belong to the ISP ... our gift to them, hidden in the small print like when 
we buy a software package, we do not always notice all the rules.

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
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