Re: Spaghetti Publishers want your FAQ!

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> Find below my draft copyright notice; any
> suggestions are appreciated.

> *********** Notice to Spaghetti Publishers ********
>
> A spaghetti publisher is one whose philosphy of publishing is
> to "throw it at the wall and see if it sticks." Over the
> last few months, they been very busy putting out badly written
> Internet books, and are looking for yet more material they
> can rush into print in their ever greedier search for easy $[...]

I'd probably leave out the nasty note to those publishers. Even though
you were shaken by the letter you got, it will help noone to put the snarl
in your FAQ.

> This is an abuse of the copyright laws,

Actually, I don't think that it is an abuse of copyright laws. I'm no
lawyer, but I think that publishing something posted to a public
bulletin board constitutes "fair use".

> This FAQ is Copyright (C) 1994 by Bernard Aboba,

okay so far. I'd probably include "All Rights Reserved". Some South American
countries required this at one time (I don't know if any of those countries
did not join the Berne Convention -- if all did join, then the ARR portion
is no longer necessary).

> and is made available as a service to the Internet community.

This says nothing about the copyright, and it's probably a good idea not to
include superfluous information.

> It

I'd probably replace this by "This text, in whole or in part,". Remember
that there are several copyrights. If I remember my copyright law correctly
(and there's no guarantee that I do), the right to distribute a portion of a
work is separate from the right to distribute the entire work verbatim.

> may not be sold in any medium, including

I'd add "but not limited to".

> electronic, CD-ROM, or database,

I'd probably axe the "or database" part.

> or published in print, without the explicit, written permission of
> Bernard Aboba.

There are several texts on copyright law for the layman. I'd consult one of
those for better details -- after all, we're just a bunch of code hacks!

--
Wade Guthrie                     | "They couldn't hit an *elephant* at this
wade@nb.rockwell.com             | dis...", last words of Mjr. Gen. (?) 
I don't speak for Rockwell.      | Sedgewick, American Civil War.

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