Posted by UltraW on September 28, 2000 at 18:41
In Reply to: A snag posted by Alex on September 27, 2000 at 07:37
From previous research on related subjects it's clear to me that writers of posts to bulletin boards own the copyright.
There is almost no case law on the subject because the tangible value of individual posts are near zero. (Nothing to sue over.) But legal opinions are pretty unanimous that the writer owns the copyright.
However, that doesn't necessarily mean that WetSet doesn't have a legal right to do what they propose. They aren't publishing this material without permission - it's already been voluntarily published by the authors at the WetSet site. What they are doing is applying a fee to the bulletin board service - applying method not unheard of with bulletin boards where limited access is provided free and full access for a fee.
I'm sure a legal argument could be made both ways - and I'm unaware of any actual case on the subject. But I think the bulletin board operator would most likely win. For I believe the determination would be that the single element with the greatest value (and greatest cost) is the service, and that's all the operator would really be controlling. (The copyright holders, after all, would still be free to publish elsewhere while WetSet would not.)
I suspect, however, that a request by a copyright holder to remove a post should be honored. At least I would encourage WetSet to at least honor that in consideration of the unexpected change.
UltraW
Email: ultraw@mail.com