AUTHORS' RIGHTS; PERMISSION ISSUES

While the whole point of this collection is to make available to
anonymous users the helpful information in these files, I have tried
hard not to compromise the rights of ownership or privacy of others. 
This issue arises in different ways with different kinds of files.

First, I believe it is consistent with current conventions that I may
freely post or display any usenet articles and email letters which I
have written. I do so with the inclusion of the recipient's name and
address. I can certainly adjust the files to hide this information if
that recipient feels it would be appropriate; contact me if you need
to discuss this.

Usenet posts written by others are of a rather ambiguous standing. I
intend to respect the wishes of the original authors of those articles
whenever possible. I originally sought the permission of the authors
of all those posts for inclusion of their articles in this collection.
(Interestingly, a great number responded that they intended these
articles to be in the public domain, while a few had particular
reservations about my use of them, and one went as far as to threaten
legal action!) While over half of those I wrote to responded, there
are many who did not respond (and some whom I could not reach). I took
the liberty of including the posts of those who did not respond.  By
early 1996 it became clear that the Usenet standard was for posts to
be considered publicly archivable (hence the Dejanews database).  If
you posted something you see here but do not wish it to be made
publicly available PLEASE contact me and I will remove or edit your
files as you wish.

Finally, I have included in this collection a fair number of email
messages sent to me by others. Those with a name or address in the
"From:" field are from authors who have given me permission to include
their letters in this collection. In some cases, an author asked not
to have the letter included but I felt it was important to have the
information available; in this case, the author's name was replaced by
"[Anonymous]" and the true author's name has been purged from my
files. There were a number of authors who did not respond to my
request for permission; when I felt that their contribution was
helpful, I included it with all identifying marks stripped and the
name replaced by "[Permission pending]". In some cases I suppose it is
possible to take the information which remains and use it to trace the
author; please don't defeat this privacy-protection scheme.  If you
wrote me a letter which you see here and you would like your name
re-attached to it, please let me know; for letters in this set I have
retained the identifying information off-line. If you see your letter
masked here and want the letter completely removed, again simply let
me know.

I have made a considerable effort to protect the rights of others in
this collection. However, in view of the enormous bookkeeping necessary
I have had to resort to sometimes-clumsy UNIX tools (e.g. 
grep ^To\: */* | grep -i rusin > letters-to-me) which can miss files
which should have received special handling. Please accept my apologies
in advance if you find that I have acted in a manner which you
consider to be harmful to your rights. A short note to me will be
sufficient to get me to make the necessary corrections.


I should also touch on the issue of content.  I have made every
attempt to remove personal items from mail and pointless or
embarrassing material from posts, and yet I have tried to make it clear
whenever I have done so, so that I think no one can claim I am editing
their work in any significant way. Apart from the adjustments for
[Anonymous] or [Permission pending], there have been few changes
needed -- mostly the removal of some signatures, header lines, and
lengthy quotes of other files already included here. In every case, I
have left an indication (in brackets) of editing which I have done.
Here again, anyone who feels I have mistreated their writing should
contact me.


Finally, I would like to point out that the authors who gave me permission
did _not_, in general, release their work to the public domain. That is,
I would expect that anyone who wishes to include their work in another
collection would have to request permission from them again. I can help
you if you need to do this. Speaking for myself I will say that anything
which I wrote can be used in any manner you find helpful for personal use,
but I would expect to be contacted for permission if what I wrote were to
be included anywhere else without an attribution to me, or if it were
to be included in any commercial undertaking.

dave 

rusin@math.niu.edu

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Last modified: 1997/11/0