Re: Why? (was: A request for permission to use copyrighted FAQ's)

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George Pajari (pajari@Faximum.COM)
Fri, 18 Mar 94 12:18:28 PST

> Lutz Prechelt <merlin!ubc-cs!ira.uka.de!prechelt> writes...
>
> 4. The chances that anybody will really sue for a copyright infringement
> of his/her FAQ contribution are very small ( < 0.1%/contributor ?)

While this estimate is probably accurate for an individual FAQ, note that
these probabilities are not additive.

If someone were to publish 50 or 100 FAQs without permission the probability
that a group of FAQ authors would get together to fund a lawsuit would
probably be much much greater than (the number of people willing to fund
such a suit, say) 20 times 0.1%.

Even if such a suit would not recover significant damages I would
suppose that many faq maintainers would participate just to prove a
point, especially if the cost of participating in the lawsuit were shared
over a significant number of people.

(Just in case anyone was thinking of ignoring the copyright on the works
created by many of the readers of this group.)

--
regards
g.
          pajari@Faximum.COM   -*-   Editor of the comp.dcom.fax FAQ
George Pajari / Faximum Software / Tel: +1 (604) 925-3600 / Fax: ... 926-8182
     1497 Marine Drive, Suite 300 / West Vancouver, BC / Canada  V7T 1B8

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