I learned from the Salinger suit that writers do own their words; recipient owns the letters they got them on. So, VF is in legal trouble.

[Robert Mahnke]

Not the sort of law that I do, but the Wikipedia page about the Salinger case says, in part:

> [I]n response to concerns about the implications of this case on scholarship, Congress amended the Copyright Act in 1992 to explicitly allow for fair use in copying unpublished works, adding to 17 U.S.C. 107 the line, "The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors."


> On Nov 29, 2024, at 1:18 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> That will probably be the argument but it didn’t work for the Salinger biographer. Theses are personal letters not bits from a book for a review or teaching. 
> 
> On Fri, Nov 29, 2024 at 3:42 PM Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com <mailto:rpmahnke at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> Wouldn’t that be considered fair use?
>> 
>> > On Nov 29, 2024, at 10:03 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com <mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> > 
>> > https://x.com/AmericanGwyn/status/1862546724369129799
>> > --
>> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> 
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l