more thoughts on CD-ROM republication

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Steve Summit (scs@eskimo.com)
Thu, 12 Jan 1995 13:31:46 -0800

Last month, in <19941216.794B788.94A7@contessa.phone.net>, Mike Meyer wrote:
> But Walnut Creek sells ACCESS, not information. They make no claims
> about what's on the CDROM, other than that it contains the contents of
> one or more archives that are freely available on the net. Walnut
> Creek and the ISPs both profit by making large collections of bytes
> more readily accessible. The only difference is the delivery media.

This is an intriguing argument, and not without merit.
Personally, I'd be a lot more persuaded by it if the CD-ROM in
question were titled "Internet Access" and not "Internet Info".

This argument also has a, to me anyway, chilling side. If it's
true that a CD-ROM is just a slow Usenet feed; if it's true that
culling selected articles and republishing them would be a
copyright violation but that republishing an entire newsgroup
falls entirely within the Usenet implicit license, then those FAQ
maintainers who care about copyright integrity and who do mind
indiscriminate republishing have just shot themselves in the foot
mightily by participating in news.answers. If it's ever shown
conclusively that republishing an entire newsgroup, in any form,
falls within the Usenet implicit license and is therefore not a
copyright violation, then the news.answers mechanism, though it
may provide a nice service to readers, will have performed a
massive (and potentially expensive) *dis*service to FAQ
maintainers.

Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com

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