Tim said:
> The analogy is not valid. In the scenario in question, the author of
> the FAQ has decided not to make any profits from it, so in the analogy
> the authors of the stories would refuse royalties, I suppose. The
> analogy also confuses a legal issue with a motivational issue; I'm
> asking a question about the author's motivations, not about the law.
I'm going to try to restate my point more clearly, without feeding the
rising flamewar...
It is not necessarily true that the author of a FAQ has decided not
to make any profits from it, merely that the author of the FAQ has
decided not to make any profits *from posting it to the Net*.
That is a fundamental and basic distinction, in my mind.
My main motive in writing the roguelike-games FAQ was to squelch all
of the inappropriate posts and redundant questions in those newsgroups,
so that I would not have to see those posts while reading news. My
secondary motive was to improve the usefulness of my corner of the Net,
for everyone. If someone wanted to reprint that FAQ, I'd probably
freely let them do it... but I assert that it's my right to decide
who gets to profit from the work I have done. I'd probably let
someone include it in a book on computer games or UseNet resources,
for no more compensation than perhaps a copy of the product. On the
other hand, if someone wanted to include my FAQ on a disk of commercial
or semi-commercial game software, I'd probably want a fair share of
the profits. I retain the right to choose.
- Aliza
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