[1692] in WWW Security List Archive
A little more copyright info...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (matt jackson)
Thu Mar 21 11:46:17 1996
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 08:47:24 -0500 (EST)
From: matt jackson <mattj@indiana.edu>
To: "David W. Morris" <dwm@shell.portal.com>
cc: Paul Rarey <Paul.Rarey@Clorox.com>, "Brian W. Spolarich" <briansp@ans.net>,
www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.90.960321002452.20179C-100000@jobe.shell.portal.com>
Errors-To: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
On Thu, 21 Mar 1996, David W. Morris wrote:
>
> I find it fascinating that DHL asserts their copyrights but then insist
> that anyone who provides feedback doesn't own any copyright to their
> feedback. Absurd. Also typical lawyerspeak.
A court might not uphold DHL's "licensing agreement." Generally, there
must be a written agreement to transfer the author's exclusive rights.
It is questionable whether DHL's notice to users would be considered a
written agreement.
>
> However, neither of these copyright statements stands alone. Calling
> individual pages copyrighted implictly is not likely to stand the court
> tests anymore than copyright law protects a letter sent to me w/o
> any form of copyright marking.
BEWARE! Notice is NOT a requirement for copyright. It is well
established law that when someone sends you a letter (even a personal
letter), they retain the copyright to their expression. You can keep the
letter itself, but they still have all of their exclusive rights to
publish, distribute, display it, etc.
>
> Part of the picture must be the web site policy re. marking EVERY page
> with the appropriate copyright notices. THen the CLorax copyright would
> make more sense if instead of requiriring any copy be marked with
> "copyright ...." it require that any copy not be seperated from the
> included "copyright ...". That represents a sharing of the responsiblity.
Again, notice is not required. However, notice looks better in court and
it definately hurts the defendent if he/she removes the notice.
>
> Congress passed the Telecommunications Act the the Supreme Court is
> already in violation for posting their documents etc. online where the
> content includes some of the verbotten words.
>
Government documents are not copyrightable. Anyone is free to publish
laws, court cases, etc.
Hope this helps...
Matt Jackson
