Re: Copyright, was Re: 2 tidbits

["Robyyan Torr d'Elandris" <robyyan@mindspring.com>]

Poster: "Robyyan Torr d'Elandris" <robyyan@mindspring.com>

> 2.  Unless I've been badly misled and deceived, reposting material on a
> mailing list doesn't constitute violation of copyright, especially if the
> reposting isn't for profit.

You have been misled and deceived.

Profit is irrelevant.  There are provisions in copyright law for 
"fair use", and I'm not going to even attempt to get into details on 
it, since I'm not a lawyer.  But posting to a mailing list isn't it.  
Most libraries have a document that summarizes and explains the fair 
use doctrines.

As far as I know, regular postings to a mailing list are still a 
murky area of copyright law.  According to the Berne convention on 
copyright, the author of the text owns a copyright to it as soon as 
the text is created.  But since the text was created and intended for 
a wide semi-public distribution, there are some interesting arguments 
to be made.  In any case, posting text on a list that wasn't created 
specifically for the list is a violation of the copyright of the 
original author.

There's a ton of sources on the net for copyright information.  I 
recommend checking the Library of Congress ( http://www.loc.gov ) and 
seeing what you find there.  At one point they had a very extensive 
collection of papers on copyright issues on their gopher server, 
which I presume have migrated to the web somewhere.

BTW, in modern life I write software for libraries, who must pay huge 
amounts of attention to copyright issues when borrowing, lending, and 
copying journal articles.  I've learned more than enough about 
copyright so that I 1) assume anything has a copyright on it, and 
shouldn't be copied for distribution without the copyright holder's 
permission, and 2) I label anything I intend to make publicly 
available with the exact copyright conditions I mean.
--
 Robyyan Torr d'Elandris                              Dennis R. Sherman
 Kapellenberg, Windmaster's Hill, Atlantia              Chapel Hill, NC
 robyyan@mindspring.com  http://robyyan.home.mindspring.com/robyyan.htm
=======================================================================
List Archives, FAQ, FTP:  http://sca.wayfarer.org/merryrose/
            Submissions:  atlantia@atlantia.sca.org
        Admin. requests:  majordomo@atlantia.sca.org