Advice on Copyright Statement

I have read the excellent Copyright FAQ put out by' misc.legal' but it does address some specifics that I need. I would talk to an attorney about this, however, my experience is that few attorney's have knowledge of internet. I would appreciate your advice with some of the issues in my new notice.

First, some background: I electronically publish information on collaboration and groupware via the internet, and most lately I've been provided access through the WWW and gopher. This information is freely accessible, and I do not charge for access, however, the information is valuable to me and I retain copyright as I use it to help establish relationships with potential clients.

On my server is a public area with some information that I've created (Groupware Yellow Pages, Journal of Applied Groupware, Cyperspace Starter Points, etc.) as well as information that I've compiled with the explicit permission of the authors (for instance large excepts from a recently book) and pointers into other public internet information resources that I do not need explicit permission to point toward.

This is the current draft:

>Unless otherwise noted, the information contained in this area is
>copyright (c)1994 Consensus Development Corporation. Rights to this
>work as a "collective work" under copyright law are also reserved by
>Consensus Development Corporation.
>
>This information, in whole or in part, may be used and shared in
>accordance the fair-use provisions of international copyright law:
> * You may print or reproduce this information for non-commercial,
> personal, or educational purposes only, provided that the
> information is not modified, and that the copyright notice of the
> author(s) and this notice appear in all copies;
> * You may mention, cite, refer to, point, or describe this information
> in books, products, online services, or other media--but you may not
> reproduce in whole or in part without permission.
>
>In addition, unless otherwise noted, the author(s) grant you permission
>to redistribute this information in electronic form, provided that the
>author(s) are notified and that no fees are charged for access to the
>information in excess of normal online charges are required for such
>>distribution.
>
>Archiving, redistribution, republication, or derivation of this information
>on other terms, in any medium, including but not limited to electronic,
>CD-ROM, or database, or publication in print, requires the explicit,
>written consent of the author(s).
>
>This information is provided "as is" without expressed or implied warranty.
>Consensus Development Corporation and the author(s) make no representations
>about the suitability, accuracy, or stability of this information.

Some details about motivations, and questions.

Paragraph 1, line 1: Is "unless otherwise noted" sufficient? I have some book excerpts in my area that are copyright the author, which has different restrictions for republication than mine.

Paragraph 1, line 1: Is "information" specific enough, or do I have to say "files, documents, lists, ...."? Remember, not all of my information looks like files anymore with Mosaic and WWW - I can put graphics and audio into my internet documents.

Paragraph 1, line 3: I feel that in spite of the fact that some of the items in my area are not copyright by me, that I still have a "collective" copyright to how I compiled it together. The copyright FAQ did not cover this issue. Is this statement correct?

Paragraph 2: Because of my experience with the european student, I wanted to express what a reader was specifically allowed to do according to copyright fair-use copyright law that was independent of any rights I granted (and also without going too deep into all of the implications.) Are my statements correct? Am I missing anything important?

Paragraph 3: This is the section that covers what rights *I* grant as opposed to fair-use rights. I want people to redistribute things, but I want to make sure that things like the copyright, my email address, etc. go with the document, as well as the fact I'd like to know where it goes. And of course, since not all the documents in the area are mine, they require different rules. Is "electronic form" suffiecient, or should I be more specific? Should I require more than simple notification?

Paragraph 4: These are the things I don't want people to do -- am I missing anything? I do want to hit on some of the common abuses even though "but not limited to" should cover it -- do you know of any other common abuses I should specifically mention?

Paragraph 5: Not really a copyright matter, but this really fits here. If you some expertise in this area, I'd appreciate any advice.

Overall: This copyright information appears at the end of all of my text files, but should it be at the beginning instead? I also in my HTML files only put a hypertext link from a simple "Copyright (c)1994 Consensus Development Corporation" at the bottom of every one of my World-Wide-Web pages that when you click it takes you to the more complete copyright information on my "front page". Is this sufficient?

Approach: I am trying to avoid to much legaleze -- I want my readers to be able to understand it clearly, and understand their rights and limitations. I also don't want it too long, or people will ignore it, or cut the text off when they post it on another system.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

..Christopher Allen
..Consensus Develoment Corporation
..4104-24th Street #419
..San Francisco, CA 94114-3615
..(415) 647-6384 Fax
..(415) 647-6383 Voice
..email: consensus[_at_]netcom.com
..mosaic frontpage:
.."ftp://netcom.com/pub/consensus/www/ConsensusFrontDoor.html"