In issue 252, Chris says:
>IMPORTANT NOTE: effective immediately, I am no longer accepting
>articles forwarded by third parties from other network services
>such as GEnie or Compuserve.
 
I wish you'd reconsider this.  ALL the commercial services I have had any
dealings with are pretty clear here:  They all state that an individual
retains the right to redistribute his/her own material.  In most of the
cases where things were posted from places like GEnie to the FML, permission
was granted by the author to do so.  (Yes, I called people 100's of miles
away just to be sure it was ok).  In other cases, the posting explicitly
gave permission to redistribute freely.  In some cases, the posting even
explicitly said it was for re-posting to the FML.  And, in yet other cases,
the posting was sent as private email to me, asking me to forward it to you.
Perhaps you can modify your stance to make exceptions in cases such as those
with circumstances mentioned above?  I recently sent you a posting that said
it was for the FML which I assume you decided not to post - but seems to me
a posting like that is pretty airtight legally.
 
I should also point out that CompuServe had no problems with stuff on a public
forum being redistributed provided it was reasonable in quantity - i.e. you
can redistribute an article here and there, but you can't feed the whole forum
into usenet.  Katie, being a section leader, can you shed any light onto this?
 
Let face it Chris, we are a pretty good group on the FML, but sometimes, like
with this ferret virus thing, outside input can be VERY valuable.
 
>I know that this is somewhat of a nuisance, (particularly with
>GEnie - which doesn't have external mail access) ...
 
GEnie has internet mail access. They charge extra for it and most people
haven't the foggiest idea how to use it (I mean we're talking ferret-lovers,
not computer nerds), but please don't say they don't have it, because THAT's
the kind of statement that might get GEnie's lawyers upset (as opposed to a
repost about someone's sick ferret).
 
[GEnie having email access must be quite recent.  They were opposed
to it in the past.]
 
Bill
 
[Posted in FML issue 0453]