-----------------    In Summary   ---------------------------
 
        These days, almost all things are copyrighted the moment they
        are written, and no copyright notice is required.

        Copyright is still violated whether you charged money or not,
        only damages are affected by that.

        Postings to the net are not granted to the public domain, and
        don't grant you any permission to do further copying except
        *perhaps* the sort of copying the poster might have expected
        in the ordinary flow of the net.

        Fair use is a complex doctrine meant to allow certain valuable
        social purposes.  Ask yourself why you are republishing what
        you are posting and why you couldn't have just rewritten it
        in your own words.

        Copyright is not lost because you don't defend it; that's
        a concept from trademark law.  The ownership of names is
        also from trademark law, so don't say somebody has a name
        copyrighted.

        Copyright law is mostly civil law where the special rights
        of criminal defendants you hear so much about don't apply.
        Watch out, however, as new laws are moving copyright
        violation into the criminal realm.

        Don't rationalize that you are helping the copyright holder;
        often it's not that hard to ask permission.

        Posting E-mail is technically a violation, but revealing
        facts from E-mail isn't, and for almost all typical E-mail,
        nobody could wring any damages from you for posting it.

        -----------------------------------------------------------

                Permission is granted to freely copy this
                document in electronic form, or to print for
                personal use.  If you had not seen a notice
                like this on the document, you would have to
                assume you did not have permission to copy it.
                This document is still protected by you-know-
                what even though it has no copyright notice.

        It should be noted that the author, as publisher of an
        electronic newspaper on the net, makes his living by
        publishing copyrighted material in electronic form and has
        the associated biases.  However, DO NOT E-MAIL HIM FOR LEGAL
        ADVICE; for that use other resources or consult a lawyer.
        Also note that while most of these principles are universal
        in Berne copyright signatory nations, some are derived from
        Canadian and U.S. law.  This document is provided to clear
        up some common misconceptions about intellectual property
        law that are often seen on the net.  It is not intended to
        be a complete treatise on all the nuances of the subject.  A
        more detailed copyright FAQ, covering other issues including
        compilation copyright and more intricacies of fair use is
        available in the same places you found this note, or for FTP
        on rtfm.mit.edu in pub/usenet-by- group/news.answers/law/copyright/faq.
        Also consider gopher://marvel.loc.gov/11/copyright for
        actual statutes.
        Another useful document is
        http://www.eff.org/pub/CAF/law/ip-primer

        This FAQ can be found at
        http://www.clari.net/brad/copymyths.html