CompuServe Messages

Steve: The notion that CIS claims it has anthological copyright to the files in DL is outrageous. The analogy you draw to the publishing arena are certainly not precedencial; they are part of the US Copyright law. Using this logic, do I have anthological copyright to the 100+ public domain disks that I have? No, of course not. CIS provides a librarian service (although this analogy is not quite accurate either, since public libraries are free) for a fee. They maintain a system that allows easy searching and downloading of public domain programs, data and text files. Do you mean to say that CIS sends a copy of every single file it maintains online to the Copyright Registration Office every week, along with their $10 cheque? I don't think so. Of course, the author of a program may include a notice that the program may not be uploaded to any other public data libraries. This notice has all of the legal force of the '… may not be duplicated in any form …' notices that you see on commercial programs every day. And they're just as enforcable. CIS has no right, under the law, to defend the copyright of an author whose program is in their data libraries. Unless, of course, that author has retained CIS to defend him. And, of course, CIS had no legal ground to tell Mr. Sande that such-and-such program would not be permitted on his BBS. It's nothing more than the typical harrassment by a big business of a little guy that isn't aware of his rights. Roger