Re: archiving on inet

[Eli Brandt <ebrandt@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>]

> From: Jason Zions <jazz@hal.com>

> Infringement occurs when you copy those bits onto some medium for
> some purpose other than store-and-forward propagation or the allowed
> fair-use exceptions; stuffing articles on a CD-ROM and selling them
> falls into neither category and hence is an infringement.
 
This is hardly cut-and-dried.  Try the defense lawyer's
interpretation: recipients of the CD-ROM are leaf nodes; the CD-ROM
is a convenient transport medium.  Usenet has been propagated over
magtape, after all.  CD-ROM is the modern equivalent, cheaper to cut
than a tape.

You seem to be concerned that your words might be stored on a
`permanent' medium.  You should be.  Anything you post is propagated
to a vast and unknown number of systems worldwide.  *Somebody* is
going to archive it, maybe back it up to WORM.  You know this
already, so what's the big deal about a CD-ROM?

I agree with your basic contention that authors of Usenet postings
retain copyright minus some concession to the nature of the medium.
But your concessions are unrealistically limited.  In the real world,
you can't count on the destruction of every copy of your `ephemeral'
article.  You can't know or control the media of propagation.  You
can't expect the RFCs to be followed to the letter -- the bulk of
news systems these days are probably neighborhood BBSes who run their
gateway software out of the box.  This is Usenet; post if you can
accept it.

   Eli   ebrandt@jarthur.claremont.edu