At 08:34 AM 10/21/98 -0800, you wrote:
 
All of this tread may seem far from the inside of your bee hives but it is
of great concern to me and others who are now or for the future wantabee
INTERNET BEE KEEPERS, in a new century form for beekeeping.
 
I have trashed several of my long posts on this subject since the tread
started and I am happy to see in this group several people who really have
a handle on what copyrights are all about and will try to add the Internet
connection here.
 
Please excuse if this effort is less then adequate but this is a subject
that has in the past filled many hard drives with information and because
its requires a translation from legalese to plain English there are many
directions or paths that can be followed. In a few words its "mind boggling!"
 
>"Fair use" is another issue, and kind of sticky.  Fair use usually only
>applies to select passages of a work.  Small ones.  You'd have a very
>hard time arguing that reproducing an entire posting from the net
>counted as fair use.
 
FAIR USE, Is being argued today in court in the city of Lost Angeles as we
discus it.,  A big national billion $$$ newspaper corporation vs FREE
REPUBLIC, http://209.67.114.212/forum/t1000208.htm a Internet forum with a
conservative bent and $500.00 total income (1997) and about one million
readers a month.
 
I believe the readership is the problem or basis for these suites such as
THE DRUDGE REPORT, sixteen million visitors a month,
http://www.drudgereport.com/ ,both take away from the visits to the so
called main stream news sites and they want to stop it at any cost. One way
to do this is by using the copyright laws which are always a contentious
issue in our court system.
 
Interesting even if not part of the Free Republic's case is the individuals
who are being sued are both very active in conservative causes, skilled in
Internet programing, from Fresno, Calif., and both live as normal and very
skilled a life as they can from the confines of wheel chairs.
 
Other copyright issues are also current including the US federal law
extensions of copyright protections to years (50) after a author dies which
has caused on the net a black out of some Internet free press sites in
protest, some are still black today. Try reading Maeterlink "Life of the
Bee" at http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/mm/b.html ..
 
Both of these should concern all who use the Internet but as a blooming web
master I am more concerned maybe then the average user and having been
involved in one suite myself for what I have written in the past know a
little more about protecting myself then most would want to know but far
from everything. In the first filing for the FREE REPUBLIC case a loss of
income is alleged. What is interesting is that in the short history of
Internet journalism no one has made a profit including the complainants who
do charge for "archives" but not for access to their public news web sites.
In pretrial correspondence they offered that if URL's were provided, with
the text, from their sites no cause for action would be made. (the FAIR USE
standard liberalized)
 
>If you want to reuse someone's posting in any medium other than the list
>or newsgroup, net or otherwise, then ask the original poster for
>permission.  Its as simple as that. You certainly won't fall afoul of any
>laws that way, and its the safe, ethical, *nice* thing to do.
 
Safe is always better then sorry and I would add that the re use with
permission does NOT give up any copyrights of the holder. All should be
aware that some sites on the Internet do require posters to surrender their
copyrights and these should be avoided by those who value their copyrights.
 
ttul, Andy-
Los Banos, Ca (not Canada)
http://beenet.com/bnews.htm