Herbie555

quote: The situation is more like this: Waldenbooks sells you a handful of books. Waldenbooks does not own the text that's printed in those books. That does not mean that you get to copy those books and give the copies to your friends, does it? Lets extend the analogy and play with the terms: Waldonbook sells you a copy of the US Constitution. Can you copy THAT for your friends? Does Waldonbook control the distribution of the Constitution or do they merely charge YOU for their reproduction of it? Do they pay royalties to the estates of the founding fathers for their intellectual property? If I write a poem encapsulated with the EXPLICIT permission for it to be freely distributed, and give you a copy, could you copy it for your friends? Could you include it in a book of Poetry for you to sell? Would you owe me royalties? Does EXPLICIT permission make a difference when compared to IMPLICIT permission? (i.e. the Constitution, as information, is implicitly free for distribution due to the nature of its purpose and writing. Is it a different situation than me granting similar rights for my own work?) I submit that data entered by GeoCachers to this website are Implicitly free for distribution. People post caches to be viewed and found by others. Groundspeak provides a "publishing" service, to be sure. But do they own the intellectual entity created by a user of the service? Does use of this site (i.e. posting a cache) grant unconditional ownership of that intellectual entity to the "publisher"? If the answer to my last question is 'yes', I'll stick to racing cars and writing music and poety, and let this hobby just pass. At least then I'll know I own the stuff I build and write and I can grant usership and distribution as _I_ see fit. EDIT: I also wish to add, as a caveat, that as a webmaster I understand full-well that the website itself, the "code" of it in as much as it supports the "publishing" process _IS_ indeed owned by the website. I do NOT wish to imply that Groundspeak, or any other website, should or must provide its Value-Add for free, or even for public distribution. Furthermore, that bandwidth represents a "publishing cost", I fully support the notion of recovering such costs AT A PROFIT in much the same way Waldonbooks would profit from the sale of a copy of the US Constitution. My questions here are only meant to guide the issue to this assertion: That information created, in any way, for free public consumption carries with it an implicit license for continued redistribution, and that the act of publishing said information does not manifest ownership or control of it. [This message was edited by Herbie555 on May 30, 2002 at 06:38 PM.]

I'd like to see more microcaches in the urban or semi/sub urban areas. Sorrento Valley, etc. need more caches I can visit on my lunch breaks!