Re: DejaNews and Copyright

---------

Kent Landfield (kent@landfield.com)
Tue, 19 Aug 1997 10:49:28 -0500 (CDT)

# In another thread, Kent Landfield wrote:
# >author is right. Taking a copy of their original work and modifying
# >it to suit someone else's taste, size limitations, organization,
# >whatever, was a true copyright violation.
#
# How is this different from DejaNews slapping their copyright onto every FAQ
# that is posted to a newsgroup? I've never bothered to check, but someone
# forwarded me a copy of a segment of the r.m.r. FAQ I hold copyright to,
# and DejaNews had tacked their copyright onto it.
#
# Is this legal to do?

I am not a lawyer. There are lawyers on the net and this list. I am
sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong... ;-)

They are not copyrighting the content of the article, simply the DejaNews
presentation of it with their icons, hyperlinking and all. DejaNews is
a Usenet facility so if you post your articles to Usenet newsgroups, they
have the same rights to display them to their readers as any other Usenet
site. Their readership is just a bit bigger than most. ;-) They are protecting
their "look and feel and icons" as opposed to the content of the individual
articles which are protected under the Berne Convention. Like I said, this
is not a legal brief, this is my view of it. 

-- 
Kent Landfield                        Phone: 1-817-545-2502             
The Landfield Group                   FAX:   1-817-545-7650             
Email: kent@landfield.com             http://www.landfield.com/
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