Janet Baraclough wrote:
The message
from "Mike Lyle" contains
these
words:


I suspect that copyright doesn't apply to quotation of messages in
this medium for the purpose of reply and comment.

I'm sure that's correct; within usenet. But the issue at
gardenbanter is different, because in its new version it's now very
much a commercial website aimed at making money.

AFAIK, it's a breach of copyright for a third party to lift and
re-use someone else's material *for sale or commercial gain*
without
the
author's knowledge and consent.

Interesting, again. I wasn't thinking of GardenBanter at all, and you
pose a new question. Does linking to a public discussion group, as
one of the services by which a website owner plans to attract traffic
to his site, if it carries advertising or other commercial matter,
constitute commercial use of the material in the discussion group?

It's a stretch, I think. Newspapers and magazines from time to time
publish the URLs of Usenet groups as one of the services they use to
attract readers, and an ISP may offer direct access to Usenet for the
same reasons.

In my Internet editor days, we used to do it as a matter of course;
and if anybody had told me they didn't want their URL published, I'd
have been astounded at the refusal of free publicity, but I'd have
stopped it.

The "gateway" format of GardenBanter seems to me an only slightly
different thing: they don't claim ownership of the material, and in
fact their copyright box clearly says "The comments are the property
of their posters". The welcome message also says it isn't meant to
replace "your favourite newsreader", and names Outlook Express as
well as Google Groups. The only thing in their intro matter I'd raise
an eyebrow about is the statement "Normally you would not see these
newsgroups replicated on the web as the protocols for each are very
different (google groups being the exception), however, with the help
of many people this has been replicated into a high quality bulletin
board." Technically, I dislike the expression "bulletin board"; but
the presentation _is_ of high quality; the rest of it, though, is
either meaningless or misleading, according to taste -- personally, I
think it's both, if that's possible. But that may simply be a
misunderstanding of the word "replicate", hard though that is to
believe.

You know my views as a proselytizing Usenet enthusiast, but if you
ask me, it's very hard to see how they could be held in infringement
of copyright. And, frankly, I see no sign of any kind of guilty
intent, either.

--
Mike.