Not under UK law.
Honestly, this all seems to me to be the most incredible
over-reaction.
I suggest the following axioms:
* It is allowable to distribute Usenet news for profit
* It is allowable to feed only a subset of newsgroups (say, just
*.answers)
* Other sorts of selection, such as picking specific articles out which
you like and republishing them, are naughty (and may be illegal)
* It is allowable to feed via a slow sneakernet medium (such as floppy
disks, tapes, CDs)
If people want to debate those axioms, please go do it in news.misc or
some other newsgroup. Agreement to those axioms seems to me to be
required for a reasonable grounding in reality, so I'm not really
interested in discussing them.
Given those axioms, then, it seems to me that Walnut Creek have produced
a sneakernet *.answers newsfeed on CD. (Or at least they had, until
people started demanding that specific FAQs be removed.)
So, the grounds for complaint I feel I could justify are the following,
all of which have been mentioned already on this mailing list:
* It was impolite of them not to ask first
* Some FAQs change too quickly to be useful off-line
* Some FAQs are lists of sites and net resources, and are therefore
not useful off-line
* FAQs may be placed in an inappropriate context
Now, there's something to complain about there; but it's not worth all
this irate foot-stamping and talk of lawyers. It's also not worth
repeating each point half a dozen times.
On the plus side:
* They didn't try to steal your copyright
* They're offering you a free CD
* Maybe this'll help the FAQs get into the hands of the dreaded
drooling BBS newbies.
So let's all try to get some perspective, please.
mathew
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