Re: REF: copyrights

On Sep 12, 2004, at 11:51 AM, Ellen Gallagher wrote:

John (or anybody else who knows),

As a matter of policy (and maybe law ?), are the written text of
posts on mailing lists also considered to be personal
'property'?

I can't directly answer your question because I am not a lawyer and anything I say should not be used as a basis for your judgement on the issue. (how is that for a disclaimer?)

With that in mind:

My understanding is that it is a fuzzy area. There is no "body of law" - meaning a case, or series of cases, that have been adjudicated in the courts"- that addresses this issue. One of the interesting things about laws that took me a while to understand is that until a law has been tested in the courts, it really has no standing. (Think about all the laws that get overturned on constitutional issues). That does not mean that a law is not valid, just that it has to be tested in the courts before it really has standing.

Anything that anyone writes generally has an automatic, implied copyright.

However, when posting to a list that is public, one has an expectation that it will, for instance, be put in the archives. So having it in a public accessible archive is should not be a copyright violation. "Whew" for me.

The poster should also have a reasonable expectation that the readers may hold a copy of the post on their own system or even print it out. So that should not be a violation.

Is the post being used in a "Fair Use" situation? For instance, using a post for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright and thus requires no permission. I know of one person who used to be on this list that claimed no one could use their words for anything without their permission. Clearly not the case according to the Copyright Act.

Has the use of the post harmed the author? Is profit involved? Those issues might affect the above.

Wish I could be more definitive, but even the legal beagles don't have all the answers.

John                | "There be dragons here"
                         |  Annotation used by ancient cartographers
                         |  to indicate the edge of the known world.

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