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A little more copyright info...
On Thu, 21 Mar 1996, David W. Morris wrote:
>
> I find it fascinating that DHL asserts their copyrights but then insist
> that anyone who provides feedback doesn't own any copyright to their
> feedback. Absurd. Also typical lawyerspeak.
A court might not uphold DHL's "licensing agreement." Generally, there
must be a written agreement to transfer the author's exclusive rights.
It is questionable whether DHL's notice to users would be considered a
written agreement.
>
> However, neither of these copyright statements stands alone. Calling
> individual pages copyrighted implictly is not likely to stand the court
> tests anymore than copyright law protects a letter sent to me w/o
> any form of copyright marking.
BEWARE! Notice is NOT a requirement for copyright. It is well
established law that when someone sends you a letter (even a personal
letter), they retain the copyright to their expression. You can keep the
letter itself, but they still have all of their exclusive rights to
publish, distribute, display it, etc.
>
> Part of the picture must be the web site policy re. marking EVERY page
> with the appropriate copyright notices. THen the CLorax copyright would
> make more sense if instead of requiriring any copy be marked with
> "copyright ...." it require that any copy not be seperated from the
> included "copyright ...". That represents a sharing of the responsiblity.
Again, notice is not required. However, notice looks better in court and
it definately hurts the defendent if he/she removes the notice.
>
> Congress passed the Telecommunications Act the the Supreme Court is
> already in violation for posting their documents etc. online where the
> content includes some of the verbotten words.
>
Government documents are not copyrightable. Anyone is free to publish
laws, court cases, etc.
Hope this helps...
Matt Jackson
References: