Copyright law and Internet re-mailing lists
- To: i*@rt66.com
- Subject: Copyright law and Internet re-mailing lists
- From: m*@tricities.net (Mike Lowe)
- Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 10:11:38 -0500
An Internet "Mailing List" is a rather odd sort of animal in regards to
copyright law.
The area has not been addressed, specifically, to date, by any
jurisprudence anywhere and there are far more pressing matters on dockets
than mailing lists. Custom and courtesy presently rule here.
When a message is posted to an internet mailing list, that sending persona
is in theory, sending said message to every man, woman and child on earth,
individually and severally. An unmoderated list is freely available to any
entity with the technical facility to subscribe, i.e., in theory all
encompassing. [The exact description is: an internet RE-MAILING list. The
possible list of subscribers is not bounded.]
By submitting utterances to an unlimited, unbounded, unsupervised,
mechanical distribution system, said utterance has been firmly placed into
an exceedingly public domain.
Your deathless prose could be quoted, in time, in a very distant system indeed.
Somewhat 8-;
Mike
