Usenet and copyrights

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <naQA0wW9S8lC092yn@YGRI.net>,
Doktor DynaSoar Iridium <unit4@sputum.com> wrote:
>"He can't use it, but I can send it out for free as often as I like."

   That's perfectly allowable. For example, many attempts to rebundle
chunks of usenet and sell it (which Turkey *is* doing with this
crap-o-zine, in case you bothered to remove the blinders) have been
shot down by legal challenges in a REAL hurry. Chief among those are
collections of FAQs-- selling packages of them withOUT the consent of
each author will get you in a LOT of trouble from a lot of authors in
a real hurry. It's happened before, and it'll happen again if people
don't learn to respect the copyrights which DO exist. Freely available
in one medium does not equal public domain.

   Sure, I have an explicit copyright which specifically disallows
reselling my FAQs without explicit permission just to make it a real
no-brainer as to how you should treat them. But, this boils down to
the same old issue: the author has CONTROL over where their posts go.

   Also, you're ignoring another central fact: Turkey promised not to
use any of Joe's words. He violated that; that's trivially verifiable
with dejanews. Are you going to go out and chastise Turkey for either
lying about the promise or breaking it? Or, is your nose brown from
kissing Turkey's ass so much?

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein