Re: Copyright on Letters

[Robert Rose <RJR@usip.com>]

I think I will try to take some time to research this and write a paper.  

FYI, with snail mail letters the law is easy to state, and hard to interpret.  A dichotomy exists, with the sender controlling publication, but the recipient controlling the physical item.  It can be preserved, inspected by others, put in a library, and used as source material for books, but the actual text cannot be published without permission.

I don't know the answer for e-mail posted to an interest group such as LUG.  Certainly, if the sender includes copyright notice then the answer is easy, but under the Berne Convention no notice is needed to create the copyright.  It subsists automatically once the work is fixed in a tangible medium of expression.  I don't think there is sufficient evidence that we intend to abandon our copyrights merely by a posting.

It may be that posting to the LUG is a form of "publication."   The term publication is an arcane concept that doesn't necessarily follow from common sense, for example, displaying a work of art in public is not of itself a publication.  If posting is "publication" then we each "own" the e-mail "copy" that was sent to us.

Think of e-mail for a moment as a videotape.  You can watch it, throw it away, or ignore it.  You cannot cut out parts to use in other videos you make, however.  You can sell it, intact, and without modification.

So, I am thinking (today at least; I often change my opinions) that we can do the following with LUG messages:

1.  Keep them, or delete them
2.  Forward them to others, intact with no changes
3.  Collect them with others in the same thread and then do 1 & 2 with the thread
4.  Snip parts to use in a reply to direct the reader's attention to the issue at hand in the thread

But we cannot do:

4.  Cut out parts to use in some other work as our own
5.  Edit a message and then forward it to others
6.  Collect messages and then print them and sell the collection


I definitely see a law review article here!

Bob Rose
www.usip.com