What is Fair Use? (1998 X-Files discussion)

Meta
Title:	What is Fair Use?
Creator:	first poster was Hindy, includes many other comments
Date(s):	September 26, 1998
Medium:	online
Fandom:	The X-Files
Topic:
External Links:	What is Fair Use?, Archived version
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

What is Fair Use? is a 1998 post and subsequent discussion by X-Files fans of the topic Fair Use.

A fan named Hindy made the first post, one which a complaint about a fansite Debbilmice that had MSTed one of her fics without permission. The ensuing discussion contains 44 posts by 21 different fans.

Some Topics Discussed

• Fair Use
• copyright
• The X-Files
• MSTing
• what is legal versus what is the "right" thing to do
• the internet as a public venue, USEnet
• complaints about quoting a fan story in a rec, see Complicated Shadows
• fannish confusion regarding Fair Use, coupled with fear of X-File's TPTB
• someone posts 10 Big Myths about copyright explained, ^{Archived version} ("An attempt to answer common myths about copyright seen on the net and cover issues related to copyright and USENET/Internet publication.") by Brad Templeton
• Rebecca Tushnet comments about the topic of fair use]]
• there is much sniping and infighting regarding other fannish squabbles and past arguments -- while these comments are not directly related to fair use, they do add context to the heated stage these fans were on
• Amperage wished someone would MST Oklahoma

Excerpts

Hindy Bradley: Hi All, I'm feeling hesitant to post here right now because I think you must think I'm doing something terrible to draw Bliss' public wrath. Here goes, anyway.

I am in need of advice and hope that some of the Americans on the group can help or at least clarify something for me.

Here's the situation.

I complained to Geocities about the MST-ing of my fanfic on Debbilmouse's page, claiming copyright infringement because my stories were taken, verbatim, with not even my email addy removed.

Debbilmouse is claiming fair use, but I don't know what this means. Can someone explain it in American legal terms to me, please?

My other take on the situation is that when Geocities investigates the page, they will see that the stories are pornography and the page will come down anyway. - Hindy

Brandon Ray: I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. Having said that, my understanding of "fair use" is that it is a legal doctrine which allows very limited use of copyrighted material without permission of the copyright holder. For example, if you write a story, I believe it falls under the fair use doctrine if you have your characters discuss the fact that they watched The X-Files last night, and have them talk about whether they liked the episode and why. It would also be fair use (I think) for one character to accuse another one of "acting just like Cancerman".

However, EVERY SINGLE STORY I have seen posted on this newsgroup or archived on the web goes far, far beyond "fair use". In fact, we are ALL, every single one of us, commiting [sic] massive copyright violation every time we post a story, and the only reason nobody is getting sued or prosecuted is because, apparently, neither Fox nor 1013 feels it is worth doing, for whatever reason. Note that a number of web sites HAVE received legal warnings from the copyright owners when they posted unauthorized images from the show. Now, to my mind posting a picture of Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully is far less intrusive than most if not all of the fan fic I've seen...but apparently Carter and/or his lawyers feel otherwise.

The bottom line is, getting back to your question, I don't think you have a leg to stand on, legally, if someone copies a story you wrote and MST's it -- or even if they just post it verbatim and claim that they wrote it. Remember the disclaimer that appears at the top of virtually every story that gets posted: WE DO NOT OWN THESE CHARACTERS. We have no standing to sue anyone, or ask that anyone be prosecuted. Fox does; 1013 does. But apparently they don't care about fan fic.

Having said THAT, I will add that I think appropriating someone else's idea in the way you described is a pretty shitty thing to do. I would never, ever dream of doing that. The only copying of stories I do is for my own personal use, or to forward them to a couple of close friends who also enjoy reading them, and I ALWAYS preserve all the headers, credits, etc. If I start an online archive (which I am thinking about doing), I will only include stories whose authors have given appropriate permission.

Oh, the other thing this person may be thinking of is that there is a right of commentary under American law. You can write a review of someone else's copyrighted work, and you can publish that review, including limited quotes from the work under review, without the copyright owner's consent. But you can't quote large chunks, and MSTing a story would seem to me to be across the line into infringement. You might try pointing out to this individual that Best Brains (the people who produce MST3K) do get permission from copyright holders for every film they do.

Hindy Bradley: One of the stories they have MST-ed doesn't mention the names of *any* 1013 characters. It is solely my creation. Do I have a better chance with regard to that story?

Amperage: The right of someone to parody another's works is long established as permittable. . .quoting the entire text of another's work is not. Quoting *part* of another's work for the purposes of review or the suchlike, so long as the author is acknowledged, is acceptable.

An MST'ed story kind of crosses into all three categories, I would imagine. From an ethical standpoint: Are you pissed because someone is parodying your work? In that case, well, people are mean sometimes, but not ethical ground has been crossed. Or are you pissed that someone is stealing your work? In that case, I would say that the norm ethics of the NG have been violated. From what it sounds like (and albeit, my knowledge is limited to what was presented in this posting and the fact that I'm feeling insomniac this morning and have already surfed everything else. . .) it's a problem of the first, not the second. . .

I only *wish* that someone would MST Oklahoma, even in part.

Laura Burchard:

>However, EVERY SINGLE STORY I have seen posted on this newsgroup or archived on the web goes far, far beyond "fair use". In fact, we are ALL, every single one of us, commiting massive copyright violation everytime we post a story, and the only reason nobody is getting sued or prosecuted is because, apparently, neither Fox nor 1013 feels it is worth doing, for whatever reason.

It's actually a teensy bit more complicated than that; I recommend reading Rebecca Tushnet's Entertainment Law Journal article, http://pantheon.yale.edu/~tushnet/shc/tushnet.html.

My personal feeling is that if it came down to a court case, that fanfiction would lose; but that is less because it is historically inadmissable than because there has been a steady encroachment on the idea of public rights in regard to intellectual property, as content providers have become both more economically important and financially powerful. In many ways, copyright has been transformed in the last 20 or so years from a deliberately created psuedo-property right to a true property right; I am not convinced that we will not see an end, in my lifetime, to the idea of copyright ever passing into public domain.

>The bottom line is, getting back to your question, I don't think you have a leg to stand on, legally, if someone copies a story you wrote and MST's it -- or even if they just post it verbatim and claim that they wrote it.

Now this is *definitely* not true. Secondary copyright does exist. In fact, even if Fox were to go after a story and win, they would not own the copyright to the author's words; only the right to destroy the publication. Or consider the original MST question; believe me, if another channel started running MST3K episodes, MST3K lawyers would be after them in a heartbeat and win.

>Oh, the other thing this person may be thinking of is that there is a right of commentary under American law. You can write a review of someone else's copyrighted work, and you can publish that review, including limited quotes from the work under review, without the copyright owner's consent. But you can't quote large chunks, and MSTing a story would seem to me to be across the line into infringement. You might try pointing out to this individual that Best Brains (the people who produce MST3K) do get permission from copyright holders for every film they do.

There's two rights that could be involved, actually: the right of parody and the right of commentary. Parody, however, does not normally involve taking the author's actual text; rather, it involves rewriting it in a parallel but mocking fashion. (cf the Pretty Woman case, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.)

Certainly the principle of the MSTing is allowed; quotes and commentary. IANAL, but it seems to me the question would be whether the amount quoted is over the allowable amount. It's not the entire work, which would almost certainly be barred, but the one I looked at closely for comparison ran about fifty percent, which is awfully high; I don't know of any case that allowed such a high percent for something of that length. But there are so many factors involved that this sort of thing is usually fought out case by case.

For general background on copyright and the net, I recommend reading:

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html http://www.cetus.org/fairindex.html ftp://ftp.aimnet.com/pub/users/carroll/law/copyright/faq/ - Laura

Loch Ness:

Unless you're actually planning to sue the person, I suspect this is all purely academic anyway, but...

[snipped]

Assuming the situation really is as you've described it, I'd say the "substantiality" factor means it's *not* a fair use. But even if it's not a fair use, that doesn't mean it's an infringement. And since the whole idea that a fanfic can be copyrighted is a fantasy, the question of whether it's a technical, legal infringement strikes me as moot. On top of that, American courts generally have blinked in cases of parody, on the theory that you can't *do* a parody if you can't at least make references to the original work.

For someone to do what you've described is exceedingly rude, no doubt about it. But when it comes to potential legal actions, I don't think either of you have a case. And I think going to someone's ISP and forcing him/her to take the page down over something like this is also rude - and completely excessive. The bottom line with all this is, on top of the enforced paranoia created by some of Fox's actions, we are all getting much, *much* too serious about ourselves and our work. This stuff has no commercial value - if anything, as recent events have demonstrated, it can *devalue* original works written by the same authors - and my personal opinion is that even the best of it is *not* great art.

Would I like it if someone MST'd my stuff? Hell, no. Would I attempt to have him/her driven off his/her ISP? Hell, no. It's not worth it, and the sun's still going to rise in the east in the morning

Shannara: Well, Brandon, you're right in one respect, we're violating 1013's copyrights by using their characters, but an author nevertheless has creative ownership of the story she writes. e.g. 1013 can't grab a fanfic story or script and use it without the author's permission. Publishing on the Net is a bit risky if you're at all sensitive about others making use of your work for purposes you don't approve. Yes, you own it creatively, but unless you want to hire a lawyer and fight the issue, which is pretty silly unless someone is making money off your work, you just have to realize the risks involved. MSTing or appropriating or archiving someone's work without their permission is wrong and a decent person wouldn't do that. But there's a whole lot of people out there who could care less about being a "decent" person and only want to satisfy their own desires or try to make themselves look better than someone else. Hindy, I don't know what your argument is with Bliss and I don't want to know. I pretty well kill-filter all flame wars and arguments, so I'm not referring to either one of you in the above paragraph.

Te: Yes, please. Let's all remember that this is why the whole nastiness started -- public, name-naming accusations based on pure suspicion. Not a single word of hard proof. Yes, this a free forum. Yes, you can say anydamnthing you please. But so can the targets of your rants. Now, I'll admit that I'm not sure what this is all about, as my fucking browser won't even let me load my *own* page.

I can understand how much it must hurt to have your creativity mocked. Yeah, it would piss me the fuck off, too. However. Complaining about it only draws still more attention to the thing. I think it would be best to consider it a compliment that you managed to affect this person as much as you did... don't let them know they returned the favor and they'll eventually crawl away.

Remember, public accusations even *with* proof are damaging to the community as a whole. Some mean-spirited joke is only damaging if we *let* it be so. - Te

Maureen S. O'Brien: Hindy et al: There's another issue here beside the legal one. Just because we legally have the right to do certain things or forbid certain things, is it wise?

Yes, it's distressing to get MSTied, especially by someone who does it unkindly instead of impersonally. (And you are speaking to someone who had her own personal troll quite recently, mind you.) But is it wise to get all het up about it? Most particularly, is it wise to bring Geocities into it, or copyright law into a MSTing?

Steven Ratliffe posts here occasionally. Nobody on the Net has been MSTied more; he's practically a cult figure. His good humor about his Marissa stories' MSTings just showed everyone what a classy guy he is. That's why I listen when he posts: he may not be God's greatest writer, but he is sure as heck a gentleman.

So. If a MSTing is mean-spirited, don't feed the energy creature. If a MSTing is not (or even if is), it's all publicity. And if the MSTing isn't funny -- MST the MSTing and make it so!

Maureen, who thinks it wasn't wise to post her cool new X-File before everyone had forgotten who Punky was, as it seems to have set a bad precedent in the ng. My viewpoint character was not a Tuckerized Punky, although he did set me thinking on the subject of flamers.

Kate:

> It's actually a teensy bit more complicated than that; I recommend reading Rebecca Tushnet's Entertainment Law Journal article, http://pantheon.yale.edu/~tushnet/shc/tushnet.html.

A very, very good article, even if it does arouse rather intense feelings of intellectual inadequacy when I read this article by the kid I used to play Uno with at recess.....

But the main point is this: general convention in the industry has been to not-hassle the non-profit folks, as they seem to have a -positive-, not negative, effect on overall demand for their products. Since the stuff we write and discuss directly changes our preferences for the goods, it follows (and here I'm going of on the economic reasons for Fox to -=not=- hassle us), that, other things being equal, at -any- price they charge for -any- of their products, we're going to be willing to buy more stuff if we -do- read and write fan fic than if we don't.

Or, in English, fan fic enables our addiction to the X-files as a series and as a product line. (See the adaptation of the Henry V speech "we few, we happy few, we band of Philes" regarding the 2nd weekend of FTF's release).

(I may just have to get a hold of her and see if she'd be interested in doing a joint econ / law paper on the subject; this offers some -really- neat avenues of research, and might just get some of our worries about being shut down alleviated.....)

BUT. I will clearly state that I fully, as an econ grad student, believe that the expectation that property rights will be guaranteed by the law is necessary both to a well functioning society and economy.

IOW, if you bought a print of DD and GA as M & S at a con and scan it on to your web site, IMHO, you're on your own. -- Kate

Sheare Bliss: Diana Williams posted two excellent messages on Copyright and Fair Use earlier in the Copyright Infringement argument with Hester, some days back. In one, she stated that anything you publish on the 'Net is essentially copyrighted, but that you may not be able to prevent people from making copies. Her second message lists several sites. I went to these sites out of curiosity to see if there was, in fact, any action I could take to get the excerpt of Complicated Shadows taken down from a certain web site.

[snipped]

Obviously, in my case, I published my works for free, there was no question of marketing them. Hence, my solution to the Gordian knot was simply to reclaim control of all my work by removing it from the 'Net. In my case, the party in question has kept both the recommendation and the excerpted text up and is apparently happy to refer readers to work which no longer exists. However, I do believe that I will have legal recourse should she or anyone else choose again to archive it.

CyberPunk: >Well, Brandon, you're right in one respect, we're violating 1013's

Oh my, DO YOU THINK?!!!

>copyrights by using their characters, but an author nevertheless has creative ownership of the story she writes.

Not on UseNet. Ask the all-knowing Ms. O'Brien, with her often quoted newbie guide!!

CyberPunk, TNG, Who is quite amazed how this "newsgroup" has fallen apart. FOX doesn't have to worry about the copyright violation issue, you all will self-destruct any day now.

Btw, Ms.O'Brien, I am awaiting another OH SO COOL Punky story. PLEASE don't delay. Post now. FOX and their lawyers are enjoying the saga.

Teddi Litman: I admit I haven't seen the pages that started this whole thing. (They were taken down last time I checked. It *does* make me wonder why some people are so intent on finding legal recourse to have them taken down when they are *already* down.) Usually however, parody (MST-style or otherwise) *is* a labor of love. It might have been fun to read MSTs or other parodies of some of our favorite, classic fanfics. I doubt it will ever happen now though because of all this. Oh well. Teddi

Laura Burchard: ... the thing that would have irritated me if I was one of the authors MSTed at the site in question was that was *lame* MSTing. I think you gotta love what you MST in some way, even if it's just appreciation for the glorious cheesiness of a walking carrot, for it to work. If you hate it, it just comes off as an unclever way to whine.

Sheare Bliss: Clearly, my server is missing a post, but I'd like to thank Marlene and Laura for furthering the cause of the fanfic community while continuing to make dark hints and suggestions. What a comedy. - bliss

CyberPunk: Repeat after me. EMAIL IS NOT PRIVATE.

UseNet IS NOT PRIVATE.

WWW IS NOT PRIVATE.

You may stop once these facts penetrate your dim little skull.

Te: Yes, it's an uncomfortable idea that our e-mails can be shared. However, to shamelessly quote, what we have here is failure to communicate. It seems to me there are a handful of people responding again and again to the ever-building pile of resentments and misunderstandings. There are time concerns. There are phrasing concerns.

"Who said what to whom and when? And what, precisely, were they responding to?"

My betas would kill me for that construction, and rightly, but that's exactly what's going on here. A newsgroup is far too large and unwieldy to make *any* sort of sense of the issues behind this most recent snarl. bliss' offer is an uncomfortable one, but, to my eyes, the only *possible* way this can reach any sort of satisfactory conclusion for those involved.

Hey, here's a suggestion: start yourselves a little mailing list. In your introductory posts state clearly and concisely as possible what's troubling you. Discuss. Make an effort to reach, if not consensus, then at the very least an agreement to put this to bed. What I like most about this suggestion is, of course, the fact that if it's taken up *I* won't have to see any more of this on the ng.

Perhaps you've missed the point of bliss' offer. She just offered *all* of us the ultimate relief. The cure for any list's or newsgroup's flamewar pain: Take. It. Private. Worth a try, don't you think?

As for the lifted quote from Hindy's e-mail: If anyone -- anywhere -- warned me against "crossing their path," you better believe the absolute *best* they could hope for me to do is not to e-mail them again. Threats are not to be tolerated. Especially from someone who freely and publicly admits to having a website they don't care for TOS'ed. This is something to be proud of?

JenRose: >Repeat after me. EMAIL IS NOT PRIVATE. UseNet IS NOT PRIVATE. WWW IS NOT PRIVATE.

This is all the more reason to pretend, in each and every post, that the people you are talking to are real, actual human beings.

Fallable human beings. Human beings who have bad days sometimes. Human beings who probably aren't really out to get you, but may simply be having difficulty communicating clearly their intentions.

For 94% of the people who post on this particular board, I'm convinced that the basic intent is good.

At times, many of the people here don't quite manage to communicate their points of view without ruffling feathers, and many, many times, the people reading here are not successful in reading without getting their feathers ruffled.

It's like wearing pantyhose too long on legs that haven't been freshly shaven. The hairs get rubbed the wrong way and *nothing* is right.

I choose, most of the time, to assume that other people's hurt feelings are more about them than they are about anyone else's actions.

Personally, I think it rather strange to write fanfiction and then attempt to limit its audience as much as possible.

I think it is rather peculiar that people are willing to be nasty in emails in private but cry foul when that nastiness is made public. If you don't feel strongly enough about your position that you aren't willing to defend it in public, don't go on the attack. That said, when a conversation is, by mutual *agreement* private, going public with it is just plain tacky.

I also find the "I don't own the characters but don't steal mine" a bit strange. I've done this myself, but it causes cognative dissonence of a sort.

My personal ideal:

1. That fanfiction be preserved in as many places as possible, sorted in as many ways possible by smaller archives, and kept in a variety of larger "vaults".

2. That stories not be taken down... I'd rather that the author have the name changed on them to a pseudonym than have the stories disappear.

3. That people maintain a sense of humor about the whole thing. I'd be rather flattered if someone took the time to spoof something I wrote. In fact, I actually encouraged someone to "badfic" a story I invested a huge amount of time in.. it provided comic relief and a much needed break from the seriousness of the writing. If we can't laugh at ourselves....

4. That people post with respect, dignity and good humor, remembering that each of us is human, and that words can hurt or heal.

5. That people be willing to admit mistakes with grace and humility, rather than falling into unproductive defensiveness and hostility.

6. Likewise, that people be willing to give the benefit of the doubt, rather than becoming self-righteous and closed off.

7. That each person who is involved in conflict take a few minutes to attempt to comprehend the other side.

A few years ago, someone called me to task for failing to learn from people whose perspectives were different from my own. I immediately started talking about why my position was right. She put up a hand, stopped me, and, shaking her head slowly, said, "The fact that you are still arguing with me means you didn't hear me at all." She was absolutely correct. I shut up then and there, and took the moment of silence to actually think about what *she* had been saying rather than all the reasons I was right.

When I took those few minutes to think about what she'd been telling me, I learned several of the most important lessons of my professional life, and the most important single lesson of my adult life.

I learned how to listen to ideas beyond the scope of my world view and learn from them.

So I guess what each of us gets to decide is how much we're going to learn from the whole process of these boards... how much we're going to let ourselves grow and mature and change from our virtual interactions.

Many people choose not to be changed at all. Others may seize the opportunity to grow, mature, and learn. Usenet and the WWW offer an incredible opportunity to broaden one's perspectives.

Like everything, it's a choice. JenRose - Haven Queen of my domain!

Thompson: Fanfic is not a copyright violation!!! I did some asking around. Fanfic is copyrighted as a parody to the writer of the fanfic story. Which means, if CC and the 1013 goons wanted to sue, they couldn't. As long as you're not making any money off of your stories, you're completely safe. Which is why it's the sites containing audio and video clips, pics, and scripts that are being shutdown by FOX, not fanfic archives. And proof of this is Gossamer. If fanfic was illegal, everybody involved in the Gossamer Project would be knee-deep in the brown smelly stuff. As long as people put disclaimers on the stuff and give credit to those who should get it, everything's legal and we're all one big crazy happy world.

Teddi Litman: Now perhaps *this* is an idea that should be propagated with regards to the legality of fanfic, rather than trying to convince people certain genres of fanfic will cause trouble. My feeling is fanfic will likely remain in its legal limbo forever until some fanfic writer goes off the beam about seeing plot points from one of his/her stories in either an episode or one of the official novels. People should be reminded that previous fanfic ideas *will* frequently turn up on the actual show. It isn't that anyone is copying from fanfic; it's just that some fanfic writers are really great educated guessers.:) If you turn out to be one these fanfic writers; you should only feel flattered that you picked up enough of the forshadowing to figure out what was going to happen. Gloat to your friends that you were right<G>; please, don't accuse 1013 of stealing from you. First of all, they didn't. Secondly, such accusations could ruin things for all of us. Teddi

Parrotfish:

Wonderful post, SUe, which I'm not pasting here because it's rather long. I AM pasting below a wonderful, straightforward FAQ on the subject of copyright. I found it on the Net a couple of years ago, and I keep it on my hard drive for occasions such as this. It doesn't address the issue of fanfic directly, but it does address certain common misconceptions, like, "If I don't profit by it, it's not a copyright violation." It also points out that the principle of "fair use" which one often hears cited as a defense for fanfic really has nothing to do with it. Also, note that there are trademark issues involved as well. The name "The X-Files" is trademarked, and there are a whole set of rules and regs regarding damaging a trademark.

A pet peeve of mine: stating in fanfic that an original character is "copyrighted." And just where did we all find Mulder and Scully -- rolling around in the gutter outside our houses? :-)

Rebecca Tushnet: Parrotfish posted a well-known copyright FAQ, which was a useful service. Unfortunately, this FAQ has a definite anti-fair-use bias, and asserts as fact some things that are highly contestable if not legally erroneous as a matter of United States law. For example, it is simply wrong to say that non-profit-seeking use doesn't make a difference to the fair use analysis. It's certainly true that non-profit uses *can* be infringement, for example if you posted Stephen King's entire new book on your website so others could read it, but it's equally true that non-profit use has repeatedly been singled out for favored treatment by the courts and the Congress.

The FAQ's treatment of fair use is, in my opinion, erroneous in other respects relevant to fan fiction. Fan fiction often resembles "transformative use," taking aspects of copyrighted work and creating something very different from the original work. Adding something new to what you've borrowed -- mixing your intellectual labor with the copyright owner's -- makes a difference, and U.S. copyright law favors transformative uses. The FAQ downplays this, perhaps because recent Supreme Court decisions have made this favoritism clearer than it used to be.

I could go on (I've written an article on the topic if anyone wants to email me, but it's written mainly for legal audiences). Just remember that copyright pronouncements, like the average piece of advice you get on the net, are worth about what you paid for it -- if you're lucky. And this is *particularly* true when it comes to legal advice about the U.S. system, where there's a plausible argument for almost any position you want to take.

As for the trademark aspects, "Fox" as a network symbol is trademarked, and Fox is attempting to trademark "The X-Files" -- FYI, the notation "TM" does not denote a legally registered trademark; it's a sign that the proprietor is trying to get you to accept their ownership. Only "R" with a circle around it denotes a legally registered trademark with all the extra rights that entails. "Dana Scully" and "Fox Mulder" are not, so far as I am aware, trademarkable though I'm sure Fox will try. As far as trademark law goes, the case against fan fiction is laughably bad -- to violate a trademark, you have to use it in a way that confuses potential consumers of your goods. If you're not selling anything and if there's a disclaimer or your lack of association with Fox is obvious, I would find it hard to understand an infringement case.

It's *always* okay to discuss trademarked goods -- for example, you can make as many Kleenex (R) jokes as you want and you will never risk infringing the trademark. (There's a caveat to all this for "famous" trademarks, specifically defined in U.S. law, but that law doesn't apply here.)

The point being, there are other things to worry about. Like retaining and recruiting good authors.

Parrotfish: Thanks for the clarification, Rebecca. I think the most important lesson to come away with is that the law is very much open to interpretation, and each individual must decide how safely s/he wants to play it. I know that most online services and Internet companies I've worked for have chosen to play things very safely after an initial free-for-all. For example, in the early days of Compuserve, it was easy to download any number of games based on Star Trek, many of which used that name. But when Paramount started to huff and puff, every single one of those games was pulled.

Still, I find that faq to be very useful in terms of clearing up some enormous misconceptions. For example, while the courts may show some favor to non-profit use, it is certainly incorrect to say that you can't be sued if you don't make any money from the use of copyright material -- an argument I've heard alarmingly frequently on the Net.

And just to illustrate how unclear the whole area of copyright on the Net really is: last year, I attended a seminar on the subject held by one of the top New York law firms in the field. There was serious discussion about the notion that Internet technology inherently infringes on copyright whenever any copyright material is accessed because an actual copy of the material is cached on the server. In theory, this is the same type of infringement as when someone makes a photocopy of an article.

You also make an excellent point about not taking any advice you read on the Internet as gospel. If you're turning to Usenet for legal advice, you're asking for trouble.