Avalon CD halted
Viewpoint has *not* claimed ownership of the individual files. At best, they
are claiming a "collection copyright," similar to the way that CompuServe
restricts others from reproducing its data libraries and file descriptions.
The concept of "collection copyright" is well-known, for example, it's what a
book publisher has when they publish an anthology of poems. They don't own the
poems, they own the way they arranged them.
Syndesis declared a "collection copyright" on the 1994 Syndesis Avalon CDROM,
in order to attempt to prevent someone from ripping off our assembly of that
data. It's not retroactive to the site, of course. We had the cooperation of
the site admin, but that's all. As far as I know, the Avalon admins never even
declared any sort of claim to collection copyright of the site.