I have just today received Volume 2 Issue 2 (Oct/Nov 1988) of the
Logic Programming Newsletter.  There is a new column in this issue,
called "Net Talk".  This consists of messages which have been
posted to this newsgroup and the Prolog Digest on various topics.

You should consult a Real Lawyer (tm) before believing any of this,
but my understanding is that the copyright of a message remains with
the author, and the fact that something has been broadcast over this
or any other network no more puts it into the public domain than
the fact that something has been broadcast over the radio puts it
into the public domain.  "Fair use" would I think cover the practice
of quoting parts of a message you are replying to.

I don't know whether any of the other people involved were asked for
permission to print their messages in the Newsletter.  I **wasn't**.
Permission would have been given, and is now retrospectively given.
But it is at the least good manners to ask.  (Yes, I too have been
guilty of quoting someone's letter without approval, but not since
I was rebuked for it.)  I certainly would not have agreed to text
which was designed for 80-column display being squeezed into 3-inch
columns; that does _terrible_ things to the layout.  And if I had
been asked for permission to quote my messages on the Monkey-and-
Bananas thing, I could have supplied the Logic Programming Newsletter
with the iterative-deepening version.

I would like to point out that Mark Epperson of the Prolog Forum
_does_ ask.

-Mike