CompuServe Messages

CIS claims an anthology (compilation) copyright. The precedent is from the publishing arena. There are many anthologies of short stories (the stories themselves may be public domain or included in the anthology by permission of the author (or copyright holder). What is copyrighted by the publisher is everything EXCEPT the stories themselves — the forward, table of contents, index, and (the important part here) the sum of the stories — meaning that another publisher may not publish a similar book with exactly the same titles in the same order as original anthology. No individual author's rights are violated and no claims are made against any work in the collection. What CIS is saying is that the databases here (each DL in each forum could be considered an anthology) as a whole is protected by a compilation copyright. A bbs may not download (and make available) a DL in it's entirety. Many files found in forum DLs on CompuServe are there by the express permission of the author — and the author has stated in the description or in the program itself that CIS and/or the forum maybe the only means of distribution (of course, I'm speaking of programs that are NOT public domain but copyrighted material with a limited distribution license). MAUG(tm) has an agreement with Apple for the distribution of certain materials copyrighted by Apple. The license to distribute is given solely to MAUG(tm). In this particular case, if CompuServe had not stepped in (at the request and insistance of one of the authors whose rights had been violated) Apple would (probably) have had to get involved to protect the copyright on their programs distributed thru MAUG(tm). (continued)…