mousehands : ask philip

There’s an unknown part of international copyright law that says that whoever produced the system used to record documentation of any kind owns all rights to the use and redistribution of that content.

For hand written or drawn creations, the manufacturer of the pen/pencil/yellow crayon and the manufacturer of the paper jointly own the copyright.

However, in terms of online journals, tracking the ownership becomes a terribly complex and mentally taxing operation. The producers of your computer hardware, browser software, operating system have a say, along with your ISP, the creators of the journal system, their operating system, the creators of the language their software is written in, the producers of the database, its operating system. Etcetera, etcetera.

Strictly speaking, the makers of the journal are correct in asserting copyright. But also sadly lacking in the full details.