Newsgroups: comp.archives.admin
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From: oz@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit)
Subject: Re: copyright status and future development of comp.archives
In-Reply-To: dhesi@cirrus.com's message of 24 Jun 91 17: 55:23 GMT
Message-ID: <OZ.91Jun25014110@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca>
Sender: news@newshub.ccs.yorku.ca (USENET News System)
Organization: York U. Communications Research & Development
References: <EMV.91Jun19020107@bronte.aa.ox.com>
	<1991Jun24.001311.11155@newshub.ccs.yorku.ca>
	<1991Jun24.175523.17435@cirrus.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1991 06:41:10 GMT


dhesi@cirrus.com (Rahul Dhesi) writes:

   [rahul's conceptualizations of "public" elided]
	...
   So think about which meaning of "public" is intended here.

Thanks for your "public" descriptions Rahul, but they are not particularly
interesting to me. I actually did spend some time thinking about this and
other issues within the context of USENET, and co-wrote about it[1] in 1987.
At the time we examined the copyrighted re-destribution of "public" USENET
postings as a part of the Stargate affair, and the flap over it. So, however
fascinating it may be, the topic under discussion is not exactly uncharted
territory.

							...   Then tell
   me why this meaning should prevent the posting of copyrighted
   information to the net.  (We already have tons of copyrighted software
   posted.)

Maybe you misunderstood what I wrote. I am only objecting to the copyrighted
re-post of public (that is, it is available anyone who wants it without any
restrictions) information articles posted by others, while I acknowledge that
it takes some effort to do the selective re-post, as with any other moderated
newsgroup. My objection is mostly on the philosophical grounds, but you may
wish to get more technical, as many people did during the the Stargate affair.
They began copyrighting their articles to disallow Stargate's copyright and
its restrictions, but that was 1986/87.  Now, there is no need to bother even
in the US, as per Geneva convention, all articles are implicitly copyright by
their authors. I think the implications of this for any "derivative works"
such as the article contents of comp.archives is reasonably clear.

oz
---
[1] Durlak J. and R. O'brien and O. Yigit, ``An Examination of the Social and
Political Processses of a Cooperative Computer/Communications Network Under
the Stress of Rapid Growth'', York University, 1987 (N/A)
---
In seeking the unattainable, simplicity  |  Internet: oz@nexus.yorku.ca
only gets in the way. -- Alan J. Perlis  |  Uucp: utai/utzoo!yunexus!oz


