On Tue, 18 Jan 2000, Sharon Osborn wrote:

> Tim, I think whatever is considered public information does not need
> permission to be printed.  Most of the replies are general knowledge or a
> person's experience.  If they do not have a copyright on the information I do
> not think it needs permission.

   This is probably _correct_ but possibly not _right._

   No sane individual would claim copyright or other special ownership
   of something written usually without a lot of thought and sent out
   in an email to a long list of people. Because these e-utterances
   are mostly pretty spontaneous they are quite likely to contain
   errors. These range from typing mistakes (like the classical "not"
   instead of "no" immortalized in a poem by P.G. Wodehouse) to real
   factual blunders, some of which get pointed out in subsequent
   Histonet emails from other people, to the great benefit of all
   subscribers. The Histonet archive (lost, but ? to be reborn)
   included everything. This is fine for the critical reader, who
   has the sense to look at all the comments on a particular
   thread. It is assumed that an archive of this kind will not be
   used by anyone dumb enough to believe that everything found
   on the Internet is true. Unfortunately it takes time to explore
   a web site thoroughly.

   Anyone who is going to reproduce some "gems from Histonet,"
   presumably a collection of quite probably true items, will
   provide a useful resource for the many practitioners of
   histotechnology who have computers but not textbooks or
   journals, and no access to medical libraries. The author
   of any selected gem would probably welcome _either_ an
   opportunity to re-read and edit the item, _or_ the assurance
   that it will be edited by someone who can be trusted to
   correct errors.

   As one who fairly frequently answers questions and makes
   comments on the Histonet listserver, I greatly appreciate the
   frank criticisms evoked by some of my comments. I do not
   think it would be right to reproduce some of my statements
   uncritically, because some contain mistakes and most could be
   improved in one way or another. Probably this email contains
   some typos; I read through it only once before pressing ^X for
   Send.

   If you, Tim M. are planning to compile a collection of
   HistoNet questions and answers, I shall have no hesitation
   in saying, "Go ahead. Edit any of mine that you want to
   use."  Your own HistoNet contributions are always well
   written and rarely provoke disagreement. You'd do it well.
   We've never met, and this opinion is based only on your
   excellent HistoNet contributions.

   Enough said.
                                     John Kiernan
 John A. Kiernan,
 Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology,
 The University of Western Ontario,
 LONDON,  Canada  N6A 5C1