To: Jennifer Kersten 
cc: online-news@planetarynews.com
In-Reply-To: 
Message-ID: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-online-news@marketplace.com
Precedence: bulk
Status: RO
X-Status: 

On Fri, 30 Aug 1996, Jennifer Kersten wrote:

> >-> My understanding is that ASCII text published on USENET is in the public
> >-> domain. You could try putting a copyright statement on it, but I'll bet
> >-> you'd lose if you tried to enforce it. I'm not at all sure about mailing

> >If "publishing" is the act of distributing material to the public, and
> >if allowing material to fall into a "public" area constitutes placing it
> >in the "public domain," then we are all in trouble. 
> 
> Following this line of thinking, then are things distributed to a mailing
> list also public domain?

Not that I am legally qualified to give the definitive post in this
thread.... I will say that it's clear from the discussion thus far that a
little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.  Most of the discussion has 
been ill-informed.

Here are some general points:

1.  "Public domain" and other terms have specific legal definitions as
related to copyright.  Just because something is available to the public
doesn't mean that it's in the "public domain" -- meaning not 
copyrighted.  A legal dictionary can provide what you need, if you really 
want to look it up.  

E.g., 1/most all publications (of any form) of the U.S. government are not
copyrighted, and therefore are in the public domain (and can even be
resold for profit without any royalties due to the U.S. government). 

2/After a certain period of years -- 50 years after an author's death (it
may be 75 years) -- _books_ can no longer be copyrighted,* which is why
the descendents of Jane Austen haven't made a penny off the resurgent
interest in her writings due to the four movies produced in the last few
years based on her books.  (* Books can still be copyrighted by specific
publishers depending on special additions/ enhancements they provide other
than the base text, such as a especially written introduction, etc. 
Nonetheless, they aren't paying royalties to the author's estate.)

2.  People (and the post I quote above) are confusing issues/content
available and discussed in "public,"  which in sociology and culture
studies is often called "the public sphere," with "public domain." 
(Douglas Kellner wrote an interesting article about public sphere in the
journal _Media Society and Culture_ within the last couple years.  An
altavista search would probably yield a number of hits on him.  I believe
that Jurgen Habermas coined the term.)

3.  Relatedly, how material is distributed (i.e., mailing list or
newsgroup or webpage on the Internet, printed newspaper, published book,
ASCII text file) by and large HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH COPYRIGHT. 
It does however, influence both the legalities and practicalities of how
copyright is enforced, and how widely and easily copyright can be abused. 

(Practical example -- just because I can pick up a discarded newspaper
from a trash bin [definitely the public domain] I can't then reproduce at
will any article within it.  Copyright, and how I acquire the copyrighted
item, have little to do with each other.)

4.  Copyright laws generally are international in scope (Berne
Convention).  However, different countries have some additional
provisions, such as in the U.S. with the "fair use" exemption from asking
permission to reproduce limited selections of copyrighted works.  (Note
that "fair use" exemptions apply to specific situations, primarily by
not-for-profit educational organizations, NOT individuals.) And, the type
of material/intellectual property: films; recorded music; books; etc.,
may have variances in specific provisions of copyright laws. 

5.  For more rigorous discussions of copyright, I recommend... Pamela
Sanderson is a law professor at U California, Berkeley, and writes about
copyright and intellectual property issues vis-a-vis computing in the
journal _Communications of the Association of Computing Machinery_.  Also,
Anne Wells Branscomb is a fellow at Harvard and has written extensively on
these issues, including the book _Who Owns Information?_. 

Apparently (and sorry I've never read it), Brad Templeton of Clarinet has 
written a great FAQ on copyright which is retrievable somewhere.

6.  IMO (based on my readings not just what I spout off), everything we
write on this is copyrighted as soon as we write it.  Note that when we
sign on to the list, due to the release form we agree to before posting
the first time, we give Steve Outing permission to redistribute/archive
our copyrighted writings. 

For people other than Steve, they ought to ask permission before
reprinting/quoting.  Probably many times people don't.**  And, it should 
be properly cited.  

In educational settings such as a school of journalism or a computer
science department, it's safe to say that they can use the "fair use
exemption" (at least in the U.S.) to use our words of wisdom in
educational settings without asking permission.  But that doesn't mean
they can publish a book.... 

** _And many times people do_ as I'm sure that many of us have been
contacted before by journalists wrt discussions on this list which touch
off articles that end up being published in more traditional media
outlets. 

Richard Layman, Mgr., Business Development, and Research Producer
Computer Television Network, 825 6th St. NE, Washington, DC 20002-4325
---- 202-544-5722 ---- 202-543-6730 (fax) ---- rllayman@netcom.com

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
This message was posted to ONLINE-NEWS. http://www.planetarynews.com/o-n.html

From owner-online-newspapers@marketplace.com Fri Aug 30 16:55:47 1996
Received: from marketplace.com (majordom@marketplace.com [206.168.5.232]) by cnj.digex.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id QAA18925 ; for ; Fri, 30 Aug 1996 16:55:45 -0400
Received: (from majordom@localhost) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id MAA01151 for online-newspapers-outgoing; Fri, 30 Aug 1996 12:31:23 -0600
Received: from server.indra.com (server.indra.com [204.144.142.2]) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id MAA01146 for ; Fri, 30 Aug 1996 12:31:20 -0600
Received: from indra.com by server.indra.com (8.7.4/Spike-8-1.0)
	id MAA28229; Fri, 30 Aug 1996 12:20:45 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from firewall2.startribune.com by indra.com (8.7.4/Spike-8-1.0)
	id MAA07506; Fri, 30 Aug 1996 12:20:43 -0600 (MDT)
Received: by firewall2.startribune.com; id NAA07634; Fri, 30 Aug 1996 13:19:19 -0500
Received: from mailserv1.startribune.com(132.148.25.25) by firewall2.startribune.com via smap (V3.1)
	id xma007583; Fri, 30 Aug 96 13:18:54 -0500
Received: from frostbyte.startribune.com by mailserv1.startribune.com; Fri, 30 Aug 96 13:23:26 CDT
Message-Id: <322730D7.7DDF6836@startribune.com>