On 21 Feb 2000 09:34:17 -0500, ron### [at] povrayorg (Ron Parker)
wrote:

>I am not, however, a lawyer, and I also do not presume to speak for the POV
>Team here, so take what I've said above as the opinion of one plain ol' 
>ordinary person.

It sounds like a pretty good explanation to me. It seemed to me that
the copyright was *implied* to belong to the server owner, but as you
point out, it never explicitly states who actually owns the copyright.


I believe it is quite possible for the POV-Team to own copyrights for
the news forum, but not own the individual messages. Magazines state
that their contents are copyrighted in their name. At the same time,
many of the images used in the magazine belong to photographers that
have simply sold limited reproduction rights for their images. In a
situation like that, the magazine would be copyrighted by it's owner,
and the individual photos are owned and copyrighted by their
respective authors. Of course, there are detailed contracts involved
in such a situation to make it clear exactly what limited rights are
being granted to the magazine by the photographer.

I always thought it was silly to see a magazine state something like:
"No part of this publication may be reproduced in part or in whole
without the express written consent of the publisher." This is
nonsense for most magazines, because they don't own the copyrights to
everything in the magazine. (I'm thinking of things such as those
pictures licensed from outside sources.) In order to legally reproduce
an image from such a situation, one would contact the photographer or
his agent, and *not* the magazine, even though the magazine fine print
would lead you to believe otherwise.

Now that I've said all that, I realize that this should probably be
moved to povray.off-topic, if anyone wants to discuss it further.

later,
Glen Berry

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