Yes, emails are (implied) copyrighted when you make them available for other computers to see (post on a web page or send an email, drafts or password protected files excluded), even without an explicit copyright notice.
Reworking someone else's copyrighted work it becomes a jointly authored work if you include them as the author and should had their authorization (something like a wiki you acknowledge subsequent authors have the right to modify the document). You should include a reference to the original. Reworking someone else's work making it look like they were the sole author is one form of a crime (similar to libel). Copying (and or reworking) someone else's work looking like it is your sole work is another form of a crime (similar to theft). On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 12:14 PM, McKown, John <[email protected]> wrote: > I don't think another email forum for the z is needed. We have IBM-MAIN, > IBMTCP-L, MVS-OE, CICS-L, ASSEMBLER-LIST, Linux-390 and likely even more. > IANAL, but I wonder what the copyright status is of the messages which are > sent on a public email forum. I just don't see how anybody could assert a > copyright claim on them (thinking about Lindy's response about one person who > considers his knowledge to be his "property"). So maintaining an independent > archive is likely legal (if not, Google is in trouble). I also wonder how > much "editing" that one could get away with. What I was thinking of was > perhaps a "raw archive" (perhaps indexed or threaded) and, from that, make an > FAQ "wiki" like site which took the information, organized it, but include > hyperlinks back to the "raw archive" message(s) from which the information > was "cribbed". Might even have links to vendor documentation, if such is > available. IBM very nicely has a good Web documentation site that I often > reference in a reply so that other's can evaluate things for themselves. All > that I've been able to find for CA are PDF documents, and you need to log > into their support site to get access to them. So I doubt it would be legal > to "webify" them so that you could give a hyperlink to a web page containing > their information. Other vendors seem to be like CA. They don't seem to want > their documentation to be easily accessed via the Web in an "unfettered" > manner. Oh, wait, Dovetail Technologies "man" pages for their zero-cost > software is easily gotten to via "unfettered access" and hyperlinks. > > -- > John McKown -- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
