🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <EMV.91Jun19020107@bronte.aa.ox.com> emv@msen.com 
(Ed Vielmetti) writes:

>in the near future, postings to comp.archives are going to be tagged
>with an explicit copyright notice. [*]  this is a step in the direction of
>making this service fully self-supporting, with enough resources
>readily available to the project so that I can afford to keep it
>going.

I certainly hope you are able to obtain resources for the project so
it can keep going as a freely available service. If not, you are of
course perfectly entitled either to stop providing the service, or to
provide it privately under whatever contractual terms you choose. It is
indeed a valuable service and nobody should expect it to be available
without compensation to the producer.

However I strongly urge you to obtain legal advice (and related business
advice, and more feedback within Usenet) before adding any copyright
notice. I suspect it would stir up more hostility and expressions of
ingratitude within Usenet than any corresponding benefit that might
be obtained from making the service look more attractive to potential
funders/investors. That of course is something you can judge for yourself
better than me, but please take this as friendly feedback.

On the legal side, my understanding is that the copyright notice would
not be worth anything (though probably also not worth anybody's while
to challenge). Essentially what you are doing is "cataloging" rather
than "compilation". For various policy reasons the skill and labor
applied to cataloging is not protected by copyright (i.e. it is
specifically excluded from copyright legislation) and instead a system
of publicly funded cataloging has been established. That is not something
you can judge for yourself, nor can you rely on my unqualified advice -
it is a matter on which you would need legal opinion.

A privately contracted service can be operated without protection of
copyright, although there are obvious difficulties which copyright
overcomes. The existence of those difficulties, and the worthiness of
the project that seeks to overcome them, does not however create the
legal conditions for a compilation copyright.

Although it is irrelevant, I would add that in my opinion the policy
in favour of publicly funded cataloging rather than copyrighted
cataloging is a sound one, and indeed almost a necessity given the
nature of cataloging. Look to the library system for support and
funding. I believe it is not only authorized, but legally obliged
to provide the cataloging needed. (Depositing some "published"
archives with them might bring the issue to a head, since the LC
might reasonably claim that they can't catalog stuff which isn't
deposited with them as publishers are legally required to do.)

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