Re: Notice of REMOVAL-- saving KF

["Eric Heim" <chippys@earthlink.net>]

In article <nobody-0808992207560001@pm-4-111.dynam.wavetech.net> , 
nobody@wavetech.net (Greg Buchner) wrote:

<snip>
> ... You may not
> consider stuff you put up on usenet copyrighted, but if someone
> else thinks it does and the Berne Convention tends to support them,
> they'd likely have a good case

I didn't mean to say that stuff put on usenet is not copyrighted, I meant
(or at least I thought I said) that granting PERMISSION to copy copyrighted
material could be implied by posting it. Before anyone flames me about this
statement let me explain that I read an article (which I can not find at the
moment) describing how in the past in the U.S. authors had to EXPLICITLY
claim copyright in the work for it to actually be copyrighted. If it was not
EXPLICITLY claimed, then no copyright violations could be claimed later.
This hole in the law was plugged and copyright does not have to be claimed
at all by authors of work they create (this may be related to the Berne
Convention that you mentioned). However, continued the article (as I
remember it), in granting blanket copyright protection to authors that would
mean that libraries, schools, newspapers, magazines etc. etc. would be
locked out of doing their functions in society so specific exceptions were
incorporated into the copyright law. Granting permission to copy (as I
recall from the article) was/is not specifically addressed in the copyright
law, only what can and cannot be copied WITHOUT permission. Since (went the
article, as I remember it) permission is/was not addressed, other laws would
have to be used to determine if permission had been granted. The gist of the
article (and gosh darn I hope I can find it to post it as a reference) was
that since copyright is implied, permission to copy can be implied by
circumstances. For instance, a court case determined that recording a
conversation over a land line telephone without telling the party is a
violation of privacy and is illegal, but, recording the same conversation
over a cordless phone through the radio waves (if the violatee is the one
using the cordless phone) is not a violation, unless the call was scrambled
(this was a few years ago and that loop hole created by the court could have
been plugged in the mean time). It is the circumstances that determined a
violation. Usenet is a store and forward and delete system (as determined by
the courts, the case was cited, as I recall, in the article) as opposed to a
store and keep system and was determined to be akin to a common carrier so
permission would possibly be covered by laws for common carriers, for
instance.

Without the article to research it's references I admit I am on very very
shaky ground here, so in the interest of fair play, I retract my posted
feeling that posting to a public forum implies granting permission to copy.
:o) I do reserve the right to retract my retraction if I find the article
(and didn't misremember what it said), research it's sources, and find they
support my feeling. :o)   In the mean time, it is retracted. So please, no
flames :o)

btw,

as far as I can tell, holding a copyright is defined under U.S. copyright
law for U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and the "Berne Convention" (which is
mentioned in the copyright law) was used as ONE of its guidelines. The
actual copyright law is what determines copyright, not it's sources.

I have not read the articles of the Berne convention so until I do I won't
comment on it at all :o)
--
---
Eric  <chippys@earthlink.net>
      <habanero@delphi.com>