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I return to this subject for the general List because the rest of us haven't got very far, and I'm appealing now by this mail to colleagues who work for the big newspaper groups, or know someone who does. I'm also appealing, by popular request, to Tim again to see if he has any fresh ideas. I now have a cohort of colleagues who feel as I do about getting a definitive answer, once and for all. The off-list replies proved how little we know about it but would like to - and that it obviously does occasionally happen that a newspaper can wake up and notice, and act. In my original question I said - I have a quantity of cuttings from the 1920s to 1950s and would like to reproduce the text in typescript (not scanned) on an archives website that I run. They come from a very wide spread of national and area newspapers. Although there are photographs in some, I know that these would be usually too poor quality for me to use, so I'm only asking here about the text, and specifically about presenting it in typescript on a website. What are the rules for this? I've always assumed that there were specific rules for newspapers, and I've so far simply contacted a few of the papers' offices and asked if they had objections. Some said 'go ahead', some said 'just credit us' and some said they'd have to ask someone and ring me back, which of course they never did. In response I had a great many replies off-list from colleagues with similar problems wanting to know the answer when I found it, and from Tim who suggested the Newspaper Licensing Agency. My next mail was to the colleagues who'd asked to know, and described the story so far. The Newspaper Licensing Agency seems only interested in current copyright issues (which could easily encompass the dates I'm talking about, but that didn't seem to worry them), but they were helpful in sending me to the Newspaper Publishers Association. After much conferring the latter's only advice was to (1) copy them anyway or, at my own suggestion, (2) ring some of the big newspaper groups and see what they think. (My own collection has cuttings from very many provincial newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s and I can see that one might spend hours trying to find out who owns what now.) I had already rung a few newspapers in the past and received varying answers like "just credit us" or "just go ahead", but you will all know the feeling of needing to find out basic rules, and thus not making a mistake and ending up in a bit of bother. The people I spoke to agreed that copyright ought to attach to the authors of the articles, and also agreed that it would be impossible to find them all, especially when unsigned! Also, if the cutting was posted on the internet, especially when typed, the source could easily be identified if any paper was on the lookout for breaches of copyright. In my case, I would have to give the name of the paper from which the cutting came. (Scanned copies couldn't be picked up, as far as I know, but I'm happy for someone to correct me on that.) Remember that I have spoken only to those people who were working when I rang, and then conferred around their offices - it's possible that others in their organisations might have answered differently, which seems to prove what a muddle the whole thing is. One colleague summed it up succinctly - So basically no one cares until such time as someone throws a strop and sues, which seems to me at the moment to be the position. If Tim or any newspaper archivists can get us further forward with this, we'd all be grateful. Isabel