On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 10:03:44PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote: > Note that this email message is subject to copyright, and can't legally > be reprinted without permission (except for fair use, such as quotation > rights). Under pre-1986 US law, it would be public domain, because I > didn't affix a copyright notice.
I'm not sure that "reprinted" is a meaningful characterization of the sorts of limits which are in effect. For practical reasons, your message probably was never printed in the first place. Likewise, you can't really prevent people from printing copies of the message. If someone does something seriously unreasonable with the message, then you'd have grounds for taking them to court. In other words: [1] People have some rights to use any copyrighted material that they have received legally -- regardless of what rights have or have not been granted to them. [2] Reasonable expectations play a part in the interpretation of copyright laws and licenses. This issue of implicit copyright is significant, but it's not quite as extreme as you've presented it. -- Raul
