Quote:
Originally posted by no one of importance
If I understand correctly, the problem you all are arguing about is that one
person may have put a post from the newsgroup on their own blog or website.
If I'm not mistaken, and I honestly don't think I am, as long as that person
gives the correct attribution to the original writer, they're pretty much
home free. They'd need to cite the date and newgroup as well, but it falls
under the "fair use" exemption, if I'm not mistaken. The problem would only
be if the website didn't include the attribution, but rather quoted it as
their own work.
Philip
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It's just become obvious what is going on, and I feel justified to think everyone was rushing headlong in to a badly thought out copyright tyrade.
It might suprise some people, but usenet is not one server or just one location where messages are stored, it comprises of over an estimated minimum 15,000 computers world wide. Each one of these stores the messages individually, how they get there is quite interesting too. Several people incorrectly expressed concern that I might be copying their articles and pasting them on a site (something I wasn't doing, although that's now irrelevant), this annoyed them so much, I can only assume they don't realise what happened when they pressed 'submit'. Their article went to their usenet server, which then copied it about FIFTY times and sent it to another FIFTY servers, which then made FIFTY more copies and sent it to another FIFTY servers... Within the hour, there were thousands of coppies across the world on thousands of computers, then when people connected to the newsgroup the messages were duplicated again and again and again as users downloaded them to their computer to read. By now, these messages must have surpassed 60,000 copys world wide, which isn't suprising as many people's computers store hundereds of old messages from usenet in the email reader.
But what about websites like the one I unknowing started all this over by posting a link to? They're just one of the 15,000 usenet servers your messages are sent to automatically, this is not a violation of copyright or usenet, this *is* a vital part of usenet. Rather than do what most people's usenet servers do and send it to their email program, it presents the saved messages as HTML documents. It's a perfectly valid and legal way to view posts on a usenet server since they can serve them in any format they feel like, weather it's to enhance accessibility or to make them compatible with different computer systems. If you could actually prevent this copying and distribution in different forms by law, usenet simply wouldn't exist without breaking the law. It *must* copy the messages to work as no single computer could serve such a wide audience.
What is being implyed is that we should victemise one single usenet server out of thousands for copying our messages, despite the fact all servers copy them by default. The fact people are getting upset by this entirely normal situation would be amusing if it wasn't causing such a fiasco...
If anyone is still uncomfortable with the idea that their personal writing might be copied. Perhaps usenet which instantly duplicates and distributes thousands of copys of their writing is not the best place for them to post?
Bry