Theos-Talk Archives (July 1999 Message tt00027)

All your points are well taken.

On the fundamental question of copyright, it was well discussed in the
maillist discussing copyright by many copyright experts on it. The simple
example that was given was that if a child draws or scribbles something on
a piece of paper, then the child owns the copyright the moment it is drawn
on paper. No registration is needed. However if one has to initiate action
in a court of law, then formal registration may be necessary.

On unpublished works being referred to or info reported, the legal issue
arose out of J D Salinger's case. A book was published which revealed some
of the info contained in unpublished material. The case went up, I believe
up to the SC, and was held that J D Salinger was right. It was then the
congress went to work because they saw it would have a chilling effect on
many reporters who frequently find new stories out of unpublished materials
which the owners of the copyright may be too embarassed to disclose.
Senator Simon, who was a paperman, spearheaded the change in the law that
allowed disclosure of unpublished info. However, the law was so crafted
that one cannot disclose computer code.

We in Theosophy always have our eye on fairness as best as we can see, no
matter what the law says, at least in my humble opinion. However when a
"theosophist" tries to silence "non theosophical" information disclosure by
trying to use copyright as a big stick, then it is a different ball game.
It is all the more so when it is attempted by someone well known in
theosophical circles.

mkr


At 04:56 AM 7/11/1999 EDT, you wrote:
>Harry Hillman Chartrand, in "Copyright and the New World Economic Order" 
>wrote:
><< By contrast the operative concept in the United States is 'fair use' 
>which, in the simplest terms, means: Nonprofit use is fair use." >>  (** see 
>full credit at end of e-mail)
>
>Unfortunately, we cannot just use the simplest terms when we look into this. 
>U.S. Copyright now recognizes that an item without a copyright notice still 
>can be considered to be copyrighted, if it can be reasonably expected by
most 
>readers that the material could be so copyrighted. In other words, a book or 
>article that someone shares by e-mail could still be considered copyrighted, 
>because it is copyrightable, and because, even though the author didn't say 
>"copyright", he might have intended it not be be shared without permission.
>
>Yes, though, there is "fair use". However, fair use does not allow an 
>individual or a non-profit entity such as a school or religious
organization, 
>to copy an entire work. Fair use, though, does allow for using an extract, a 
>small part of the whole, while giving credit for that use back to the
author. 
>If someone intends to use an entire book with a class of students, or a 
>substantial portion of that book, it can be reasonably expected that the 
>teacher should purchase the books, have the students borrow the books, or 
>have written permission to make the copies. Professors and Teachers are made 
>to very clearly understand these policies. I've been there.
>
>The issue of "is the matter published" becomes somewhat of a moot point the 
>moment that copies of the material are made and distributed. As long as the 
>author has not made one copy of his material, he cannot copyright it. For 
>example, you cannot copyright your diary, because you have not published it. 
>However, if you copied your diary and gave it to several friends, you could 
>then put a copyright notice on it, because it has been published in one
form. 
>If you e-mail a document to several people, the U.S. copyright oversight 
>agency would allow you to consider it copyrighted, because the e-mailed 
>material represents copies of the material, and e-mail has come to be known 
>as one method of publication.
>
>Even if this were not part of the law in the United States, the concept of 
>FAIR USE in its personal sense, not as a part of any law, could seem to 
>indicate that you are not being fair to an author of something, copyrighted 
>or not, if you start distributing entire copies of his material without 
>permission, especially if such copies give insufficient information about
the 
>author. This happened to me in 1977-1979. I wrote a 16K Level One TRS-80
Star 
>Trek game. It was the first microcomputer based Star Trek game ever. Copies 
>of the game were out and in use within a few months of the day the computer 
>was first released to the public. The founder of SLUG (the St Louis Users 
>Group) admitted that he removed my copyright notice so that he could legally 
>give it away. He also told me "It's not worth $15 so I'm going to give it 
>away" (note he never bought a copy, I'd given it to a salesman that he
knew). 
>That certainly was not fair use. His giving the program away to his users 
>group, and giving copies to other users groups, and salesmen who gave the 
>program to customers who bought the TRS80 from them, all prevented me from 
>making money from that material. What publisher wanted to sell a program
that 
>was given away coast to coast before I even had a chance to inquire about 
>publication. By the way, when I gave the program to a few friends, I was 
>giving it to them for "demonstration purposes." It was people they gave it
to 
>who abused it. And most of the abusers were persons, not companies.
>
>No matter what we think about the law in various countries, we need to think 
>about what is FAIR to the author, whether we think the material is 
>copyrighted, copyrightable, neither, or the equivalent in another country.
If 
>someone writes ten paragraphs about a topic to a group of friends, and we 
>want to comment on one thing the person said, we have no right to copy the 
>entire ten paragraphs when we make our comment. FAIR USE would imply that we 
>can copy that ONE or TWO things that we are commenting on, giving credit to 
>the original author, and comment on those things in our reply. Note that I 
>did this with my comment, though probably going overboard in my "credit".
>
>In a group like Theosophy, we'll never have one standard that will apply to 
>all of us, but fairness is something that we can try to use as a defacto 
>standard. I would certainly want that to apply to the material that I've 
>posted to my web pages that might be of interest to others. 
>
>For example, in my search for material about the Lord's Prayer being in 
>existence before the birth of Jesus, I found a web page posted by a 
>Theosophist. I quoted from his page, and gave a link to his page with the 
>quote. I consider that to be fair use. I did not ask his permission to use 
>the material, but someone that is interested can figure out how to contact 
>him from his web page. 
>
>As a further example, I distributed my thoughts about that 150 B.C. Lord's 
>Prayer to a group of contacts on <www.SixDegrees.com>. Several people
replied 
>back to me about my comments. I used their comments on a second page that is 
>linked to the first page.
> 
>You can find my comments about the Lord's Prayer and those person's replies 
>to me at <http://members.aol.com/aacmrmaze/LordsPrayer.html>.
>
>Well, enough rambling, I think I'll send this off. (and if you want to know 
>what I look like, it's in the article at 
><http://members.aol.com/aacmrmaze/TheMorningNews.html>.
>
>John Knoderer
>
>** cited paragraph at beginning of this e-mail comes from "COPYRIGHT AND THE 
>NEW WORLD ECONOMIC ORDER" by Harry Hillman Chartrand, Cultural Economist & 
>Publisher, Compiler Press; and Editor of "The Compleat Canadian Copyright
Act 
>1921 to 1997 plus Annual Update '98," "The Compleat Multilateral Copyright 
>and Related Agreements, Conventions, Covenants & Treaties 1998." For more 
>information, please contact h-chartrand@home.com
>
>

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