Usenet News Postings
Newsgroups pose an interesting problem from a copyright perspective in that they contain elements of email (sending a message to other people) and Web pages (publishing a message for all netizens to see). This section deals with the issue of copying newsgroup messages as opposed to the copying of news articles into newsgroup messages . Many people who post to newsgroups never give a second thought as to the ultimate fate of their message. On the other hand, some people are very sensitive about who sees, and what happens to, their messages. And then there are those who would just as soon have the planet spammed with their messages. With all of these different expectations attached to people’s messages, it behooves netizens to understand the rules of the road and state their expectations accordingly.
Copyright Protection of Posts Let’s say that you are reading the newsgroup physics.brilliant.snob when in a flash of insight you discover the secret to free energy. Eager to memorialize this discovery, you compose the following message:
All that has been said in this newsgroup is ultimately as nourishing to the scientific appetite as a water molecule with a missing proton. The formula x = pi / $C0FFEE sublimely resolves all blemishes from the landscape of particle physics.
There it is – your baby. You sweated over your keyboard for six hours to craft two pithy sentences that simultaneously puts down your equally arrogant colleagues and bestows upon the world the secret to free energy. You can now send your baby out to the physics.brilliant.snob newsgroup secure in the knowledge that it is protected by copyright. As such, it is legally protected from indiscriminate copying to newspapers, magazines, and even the sanrio.hello.kitty newsgroup.
But if your message is posted there for all 30 million netsurfers to see, what’s the problem with reposting it to another newsgroup? Well, posting such a virulent insult in sanrio.hello.kitty may offend the subscribers of that newsgroup. They may think that you posted it there and that you were referring to them, thereby causing the subscribers of that newsgroup to hold you in disdain. Also, you may feel that the subscribers of sanrio.hello.kitty are simply unworthy of the secret to free energy, and you would therefore just as soon not have them reading it. Whatever your reason, its irrelevant – you control the copyright, and its your prerogative.
Retransmitting Information
Suppose someone reads your post in the physics newsgroup and then posts the following message in the sanrio.hello.kitty newsgroup:
Discussion
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