[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Usenet archives sold?

["Alberto Gaitan" <alberto@null.net>]

> Geert writes:
> As far as I can see the issue of Google *owning* Usenet
> archives should have been discussed much earlier, when Dejanews started
> archiving Usenet for commercial purposes. This debate is not about the
> right of this or that company to make money, but about the question if
> they should do that with other people's writing, without asking
> permission.

I remind myself that this isn't like that other dotcom's use of 
dissertations for profit, nor like the example recently posited of 
claiming copyright of a compilation of two or three otherwise 
copyrighted books. Usenet's are writings offered into the ether by 
their authors, usually as a reply to a query, without any hope for 
profit other than cred: the copyleft way. It was *because* of 
dejanews that we got a small sense of permanence about a 
system designed to be almost as ephemeral as a conversation. 

Nowadays, lawmakers make a distinction between databases and 
other types of intellectual property. I can see how the notion that 
an archiver might claim content copyright as well as database 
copyright might raise copyright-sensitive folks' hackles. A bill 
before the US Congress seems to aim at letting archives like 
Google maintain a database copyright without claiming content 
copyright, thereby allowing them to sell that 'intellectual property' 
but not any other:  

"H.R.1858 [1] also seeks to provide protection to publishers of 
electronic databases but it also ensures public access to facts and 
information, which historically have been part of the public domain." 
 -- from (http://www.cni.org/Hforums/ninch-
announce/1999/0076.html)

If people come to fear sharing their knowledge because of copyright 
concerns, the Usenet will be no more and that unprecedented 
conversation will be over. If they prevent archivers from making a 
living out of their labor, that unprecedented conversation will be 
forgotten.  

Alberto Gaitán

[1] http://www.databasedata.org/hr1858/hr1858.html



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