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Re: Intellectual Property Concerns?
Authored by: newbish on Dec 20, '02 10:36:00PM

First:
Rob, congratulations! I can't wait until I can get my copy! MacOSXHints has been a terrifice site and has helped me learn a great deal more than I could have accomplished on my own.

Second: (I sincerely appologize for the length of this posting)
Mike, not a bad thought, but I think in this case Rob is safe. The key word is 'editor'. Keep in mind, I obviously haven't read the book yet, so any of my opinions should be kept in that light. If a newspaper decided to print an anthology of its opinion section over the past century, they are within their rights to publish that material. Submissions were sent freely in the assumption that they would be printed in a public forum. If you paid the newspaper to print what you wrote, then you still own the rights to that article. If the newspaper paid you to write that article, then they would own the rights. It costs the newspaper publisher a certain amount to prepare something for printing in the paper. Consider this service as barter for the rights to print your article.

Rob is the editor of MacOSXHints.com. Therefore, he is trading his effort to publicly post submitted items that contributors have submitted for the right to publish these things. These items were submitted freely into a public forum. Rob is being paid for his efforts to collect, organize and edit these items into a readable anthology so readers can educate themselves better. Otherwise, these things would never have seen the light of day. (And keep in mind that people who submit things to be posted are called, "Contributors.")

Another think to consider -- using UNIX-related submissions as an example -- is that the vast majority of items submitted are pretty much standard practice to unix administrators. These things are simply new to us. This means these submissions are not copywritable by the submitters, they are prior art. As these things are used by thousands of people over and over, any copywrite claim would be considered unprovable.

Last, the people who have posted their hints here have done so in an effort to help their community of Mac-users learn to get more out of their investment into this operating system. They put these things up here for people to use and learn. That says something about the caliber of these people, their desire to help others. If someone is upset by something they submitted showing up in the book — well, how can they prove that it was their's, and not one of a dozen other identical submissions?

Keep up the good work, EVERYONE!



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