🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov18.150853.10999@sei.cmu.edu> rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito) writes:
>
>In article <Bxo10K.4M7@cs.uiuc.edu>, Carl M. Kadie writes:
> 
>|> rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito) writes:
>|> 
>|> >I think that this is not the case.  For First Class mail, a LETTER is the
>|> >property of the sender, and not the recipient!
>|> 
>|> Not so. The letter is the recipient's property. The recipient can burn
>|> it, sell it, and show it to others privately. The copyright, however,
>|> belongs to the sender. This prevents the recipient from publishing it,
>|> copying it, or exhibiting it publically (beyond what fair use allows).

Actually, I don't think there's much, if anything, that would prevent
making the contents public either.  That could simply be done by
announcing to the world that anyone who wants to read John Doe's letter
can stop by and do so, in fact I suspect you could display it in a 
picture frame if you wanted to.  If I buy a painting, that painting
is then mine, I can display it any way I want, including showing it
to the world.

>Indeed -- I wasn't precise enough.  I should have said that the CONTENTS of
>the letter remain the property of the author, and cannot be made public
>without the author's consent.

See my comment above.  I don't think any permission is needed to
make the contents of a letter public.  It is done all the time in the media
and I've never heard of anyone trying to stop the practice by virtue of
a copyright claim.

>  This was the context of the discussion
>regarding the publication of email.  It is NOT fair use to post email.

Actually, given the relatively short length of most email, I'd bet it would
easily fall into the "fair use" doictrine.  Now that doesn't make it
ethical, moral, or just nice to do, but it isn't very likely
illegal or at odds with copyright law.

An example, if someone sends me a nasty email note of say one or two
paragraphs, I see no copyright violation if I post that entire email 
as long as it is accurately quoted and credited to the author.  The author
may not like it, but there's really no copyright infringement as I see it.
Just my .02.  Your mileage may vary.  :-)


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