[1222] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Delicious irony
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (NOONAN%MSUS1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu)
Tue Sep 15 14:34:09 1992
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 10:47:08 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
From: NOONAN%MSUS1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Last week I was next to a US Post Office truck for a few brief moments
at a 3-way stop sign. When I glanced over at it, I saw the following:
"Color Scheme" followed by a circle with either a C or R in the middle.
It made my day to see that the old familiar red, white, and blue is now
considered by the Post Office to be its intellectual property. How clever
of them to have thought it up. (Perhaps it was only a good-humoured prank -
but I doubt it.)
Several times in the last couple of weeks I have had the pleasure of
seeing similar oddities on the net:
a special interest list claim ownership (with right to publish and profit)
of all communications on the list - known as compilation copyright
and held by the organization which owns the computer the listserv
resides on... (I shouldn't have copied my thesis at Kinkoes - now they
must own it)
several signatures (you know - the silly little pictographs or quotes)
sporting copyright notices for the author's network communications
(darn if they weren't copyrighted I could include them in this
message!)
an apparently deliberate violation of Billboard's copyright for its top
hits list in the form of a publicly available "finger" location -
merely saying that they are "provided for personal use" doesn't
strike me as right when the directions are given out on usenet and
several special interest groups
While these examples make me laugh at their very absurdity, they indicate
the present state of uncertainty regarding intellectual property rights.
Dana Noonan
noonan@msus1.msus.edu
