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From: gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.news,net.legal
Subject: Re: Theft of Copyrighted Material
Message-ID: <657@sun.uucp>
Date: Tue, 20-Mar-84 21:55:02 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.657
Posted: Tue Mar 20 21:55:02 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Mar-84 08:25:11 EST
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Society's aim in setting up laws is to make people behave "reasonably"
towards each other (simplification of course).  The tack that the U.S.
seems to take is to write the laws so that just about everything is
illegal, relying on the hassle, cost, and time of pushing a case
thru the clogged courts to prevent this from being a serious problem.
(It IS serious in that the illegality of everything is used to TARGET
certain people and groups, but it's too unwieldy to use on everyone.)
So while it's true that ASCAP could sue every bar in North America,
they won't, because it's a losing proposition.

Somehow I doubt that a recording artist could lose money from having the
words to their song posted to Usenet, but if they want to pay lawyers
to stop the practice, well, that's the kind of client lawyers like
best.

On the other hand, having your unpublished (or published!) novel
reproduced in toto for a national audience would be a reasonable thing
to sue about, since you can show and recover for actual financial damage.

--> I'm not a lawyer, but I live under these laws, so I'm required (by
--> law) to understand them.  Right?  So it must be true...or Catch-22.