The statement that facts are in the public domain and cannot
be copyrighted is often made. Franklin Pierce has an article on the .
web site which discusses this in detail and also makes the
following statement:
Quote
Licenses implied in fact.
Fair use allows one to use anothers' work without approval, but other uses
may be approved by implication. For example, when a message is posted to a
public email list, both forwarding and archiving seem to be impliedly
allowed. It is reasonable to assume that such liberties are okay if not
explicitly forbiden. However, when forwarding, archiving or, say, using
part of a prior message to respond to an earlier message, be careful not
to change the original meaning. No one impliedly authorizes another to
attribute to them an embarrassing (or worse) message they did not write!
Unquote
This can be found at
http://www.fplc.edu/tfield/copyNet.htm