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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