Re: gEDA-user: good books about footprint and land patterns

[der Mouse <mouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>> Hmm, thanks, I didn't know that applied to stuff you post on the web
>> into free forums.
> It depends on the terms of the forums.  [...]

And, in some cases, the license you declare on the work.  Yes, in most
countries, everything copyrightable is born copyrighted and stays that
way (unless it's explicitly released into the public domain, for
jurisdictions which support that - and a few other exceptions, such as
works to which an applicable government would otherwise hold the
rights, some of which pass into the public domain as of their
creation).

> For example, if I post some ASCII art to usenet, and someone else
> posts a copy elsewhere, I can sue for copyright infringement (caveat
> fair use laws) as I never granted a license-to-copy to anyone.

Well, you can sue, but (at least in the USA) you can sue pretty much
anyone for anything.  In the case you sketched, you're unlikely to win;
I daresay courts would find that posting it to usenet constitutes a
grant of license-to-copy to every usenet site carrying the group(s) in
question and quite probably something even wider - especially if you
didn't place an explicit copyright notice and license on it.  (And,
even if you do win, you're unlikely to get more than a takedown
injunction; I can't see a damages award for someone copying a usenet
post, except possibly in very special circumstances such as a group for
which posters have a reasonable expectation of very restricted
distribution but which leaked.)

/~\ The ASCII				  Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML		mouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B


_______________________________________________
geda-user mailing list
geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user