Re: RC: Re: Phil Gardner's letter in April EN Mailbag

[jlong@mti.net (Joe Long)]

On Tue, 13 Apr 1999 12:57:36 EDT, Tivers@aol.com wrote:

>Once an author "publishes" in an open non-copyrighted public forum, every 
>word is fair game--there is no enforceable copyright protection left. 

Mike and Doyle made the same claim, but it's not correct.  There are
excellent resources online to find out the facts about copyrights.
One is http://www.patents.com/copyrigh.sht and another is
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html  

To quote two revelant excerpts from the latter site:

*****  Begin material quoted (with permission)

3) "If it's posted to Usenet it's in the public domain." 
False. Nothing modern is in the public domain anymore unless the owner
explicitly puts it in the public domain(*). Explicitly, as in you have
a note from the author/owner saying, "I grant this to the public
domain." Those exact words or words very much like them.  [the same
applies to mail lists]

10) "They e-mailed me a copy, so I can post it." 
To have a copy is not to have the copyright. All the E-mail you write
is copyrighted.

***** End quoted material

-- 

Joe Long
jlong@mti.net
http://www.mti.net     Business
http://www.rnbw.com    Personal


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