Re: Concerning the Beagle Brothers freeware archives, graphics and such

["Greg J. Buchner" <buchner@tcfreenet.org>]

On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Phoenyx wrote:

> Perhaps I'm missing something here and I've been around message
> forums of one sort or another since the BBS era. As far as I can
> tell, this is a public forum as designated by the access medium.
> Even when they were first started, they were considered public
> access mediums. In light of this fact, it stands to reason that
> any messages posted here would be in the public domain by default.
> 
> While I agree that everyone has the basic right to protect their
> intellectual property. One can not complain when they publicly
> post this property in a known public forum.

A street would be a public forum also, but if you went out and gave
a speech on the street it would remain your property under copyright
laws.  This is covered under US and world copyright laws.

However, there is a fair use clause which would permit quoting
(reasonable amounts, likely as defined by a judge) and archiving.

Basically everything you write is protected by copyright laws unless
you forfeit those rights.  But there's also the point that to be
able to really enforce copyright stuff from usenet newsgroups, you'd
have to file some stuff with the US Govt. concerning the stuff that
you wrote.  And there is a filing fee.

Greg B.

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