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From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix,misc.legal,comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Free software and Usenet articles on CompuServe
Message-ID: <2123@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Jul-87 15:51:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.2123
Posted: Wed Jul 15 15:51:37 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 01:33:16 EDT
References: <1369@cullvax.UUCP>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 33
Xref: mnetor comp.os.minix:1231 misc.legal:2153 comp.emacs:1428

in article <1369@cullvax.UUCP>, drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) says:
> Xref: cbmvax comp.os.minix:1225 misc.legal:2027 comp.emacs:1382
> 
> johnl@well.UUCP (John A. Limpert) writes:
>> I find it hard to believe that they
>> have any legal right to impose conditions on the redistribution of
>> material that is in the public domain or copyrighted by third parties.

Back when I had company-sponsored Compuserve access, the SYSOPs in the
Amiga forum explained Compuserve's claim.  It seems, at least according
to these folks, that Compuserve claims a group or collection copyright.
Kind of like when Issac Asimov put together a group of short stories in
a single book.  He doesn't usurp the individual copyright of each story
(though he could have an exclusive distribution agreement with some or
all of the authors; Compuserve seems to have a few of these too), but if
anyone tried to distribute a book with the same collection of short
stories, he would have legal grounds to claim a violation of copyright.
Similarly, Compuserve can't prohibit the further distribution of a
copyrighted program. For instance, DiskSalv 1.0 (an Amiga program that I
wrote) is available on Compuserve, even though it is copyrighted by ME.
Compuserve can't claim any ownership of this program (at least I hope they
don't, I don't believe that they'd have a legal leg to stand on if they
did), but if a rival computer network were to download all of the
AmigaForum's utilities library, including DiskSalv, and upload it to their
equivalent data library, they would claim a copyright infringement.
To my knowledge, this had never been legally tested.  It could be very
hard to prove that an entire program collection of freely redistributable
programs was lifted in whole, since most likely every one of the programs
is also available from a separate source.
-- 
Dave Haynie     Commodore-Amiga    Usenet: {ihnp4|caip|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh
"The A2000 Guy"                    PLINK : D-DAVE H             BIX   : hazy
     "Catch a wave and you're sittin' on top of the world" -Beach Boys