Sending e-mail or posting to newsgroups is, technically, publishing. The rules of copyright are the same as they are for every magazine and newspaper. Distributing someone else's work on the Internet can get you sued.

Large corporations, in particular, are skittish about seeing their material on the Internet. Even "fair uses" -- nonprofit, personal uses -- are occasionally challenged. The law determines who wins copyright law suits, not when or if lawyers can file the suits.

So, if you're not making any money, you're using someone else's work sparingly, you're not affecting the value of the work and you know a discount lawyer, don't worry. To be absolutely safe, though, ask permission before passing out someone else's work. In some cases, avoiding legal trouble may be as simple as attaching a copyright notice and a name.

In others, you may have to petition corporate lawyers, pay money and fill out forms. The procedure is dictated by the person or group you're asking. The United Media syndicate has an exhausting procedure for acquiring permission to publish a "Dilbert" comic strip.

If you get permission from anyone, be sure to get it in writing.

You can freely copy, e-mail, post and distribute anything that authors label "public domain," the equivalent of universal permission. But the authors must include a note somewhere that says, "This is public domain" for you to use it safely.

Also keep in mind that copyright only protects substantially original works set down in a "fixed" form. Some information, such as calendars, historical facts, and listings of ingredients, cannot be copyrighted. That still doesn't mean you can e-mail them freely, though. The writing and presentation of the historical facts may be copyrighted, even if the facts themselves are not.

General ideas cannot be copyrighted. If you write a long e-mail full of snail jokes and then your co-workers start e-mailing each other snail jokes, they aren't infringing on your copyright unless they use your jokes without your permission.

Copyrights also expire in time. Copyrights only last 50 years after the author dies. After that, they either become public domain or they are inherited by relatives. Works made for hire, such as news articles, are protected for 100 years after they're published.

Protecting Your Work
The minute you complete a Web page, a poem, a letter, a story or a drawing, it is copyrighted. You don't have to attach a copyright notice to protect it, though a notice may serve as a not-so-gentle reminder that you don't want your work reproduced without your permission.

-- Michael Whitney