Re: archiving on inet

[Jason Zions <jazz@hal.com>]

>It is the difference between "broadcast" and "interactive communication."
>Tell me, if I call in to the talk show you are distribute as part of your
>radio program, do _I_ now own the copyright to a portion of your show?

This is an interesting point of discussion. The question becomes one of
determining what the protected work is. Given that it is a call-in show, the
entire show would be a protected work and its copyright would belong to the
show's creator. I do not know if you retain copyright in the small part of
the work which represents your own intellectual property (i.e. what you
say), but I suspect it could be argued that you gave your permission to
broadcast your work when you called in to begin with. It gets murkier to me
with respect to compensation from the sale of transcripts or recordings.
Mike, is there case law here?

>But under all the smoke and mirrors nothing changes the fact that I am
>selling archives of the Usenet.  No amount of puffed up indignation is
>going to change the fact that your Usenet posting or message to a mailing
>list is of no real value to you and is honestly as free as a bird once it
>hits the wire.

We differ on the use of the word "honestly". In practice, enforcement is
well-nigh impossible; nonetheless, according to the letter of the law, my
words are my property to do with as I see fit. If I state that they may not
be recorded on optical media, the law requires you to honor that.

Jason

Copyright 1994 Jason Zions. Copying for the purpose of propagation of the
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