On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 14:01:38 -0500, "Ted Byers"
wrote:

If that is correct, Google Groups has failed to pay me any royalty for
archiving and redistributing my usenet articles. I wonder how Google
gets away with "illegally" copying and redistributing all those usenet
articles without a having to defend themselves against a myriad of
tort suits. :-)

Probably because the vast majority of copyright holders for the material
they archive don't care about their rights to the material they posted.

More than that, usenet is a public forum and Google is simply
providing a way for users to access that forum. The fact that posts
are archived long after they would be deleted from most newgroups
servers is not a fundemental difference in function. If, however,
Google decided to use your posts in a "Selected copyright discussion
posts" collection that they put on one of their webpages, you might
indeed have a legitimate copyright claim against them.

deg