On 12 Jul 2005 at 10:53, dhbailey wrote: > Christopher Smith wrote: > > > On Jul 12, 2005, at 9:27 AM, Phil Daley wrote: > > > >> At 7/12/2005 09:13 AM, Christopher Smith wrote: > >> > >> I agree with Aaron. > >> > >>> This is a very good point. Dennis has already made generally > >>> available for free a whole cartload of his work (musical and > >>> verbal) while retaining his copyright, on his various websites. No > >>> doubt he considers his writings here to be similar. > >> > >> Then he needs to mark every message with a Copyright statement. > >> > >> Otherwise he hasn't a leg to stand on, legally. > > > > I don't know about US copyright law, but in Canada copyright is > > applied automatically, with or without the notice. It's kind of > > like, this bicycle is mine, even if I DON'T put a sign on it saying > > so. The > > copyright notice is just a warning, or a courtesy, depending on > > your intentions. > > > > If he can prove he is the legal author, he has copyright to it, > > notice or not. > > I wonder if the courts will rule, though, that by posting to a group > where he doesn't know the membership and can't control the membership > he is effectively publishing the messages for any and all to see and > read and archive, and so the archive sites are within their legal > rights to simply be another member of the list.
I think only a very stupid court that doesn't understand the issues would rule that way. > Sort of like the 'law' of unintended consequences -- posting messages > to an extremely public list (even though it may be called "private" by > its owners, since anybody in the world is free to subscribe, with no > qualifications to be met nor stipulations placed, the courts may view > this as a public list) . . . Consider the difference between posting to any unmoderated Usenet group and posting to the Finale list. It's a *huge* difference. > . . . means that the materials are published with the > intention that users will use them as such materials are commonly > used, printed, read, stored, archived, shared with others not on the > list, forwarded to others, and since no such stipulations are placed > on the messages people who subscribe to this list can reasonably > expect that all the members realize all the uses to which such > postings are put and therefore give tacit agreement to such uses. > > It would be very interesting to see how a court would rule if this > ever went to trial! I think the ethical and legal issues are pretty clear to someone who understands how mailing lists work. There are a number of implicit aspects to the subscription contract that have been pretty well understood for a very long time. I note that there don't seem to be any explicit Finale list terms of service accessible from http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale. It was so long ago that I subscribed that I don't believe I have the terms of service you get when you subscribe. I think it would be helpful to have those accessible from the listinfo page (based on my past experiencing administering a mailman mailing list, I know that part of the content of that page is configurable by the list administrator). As to what courts would or would not rule, that's a different kettle of fish. It shouldn't need to get that far. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc All non-quoted content (c) David W. Fenton, all rights reserved _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
