Nothing unusual here as copyright extends to the creative expression of an idea, not to the idea itself. This is what sometimes makes certain cases difficult to judge. Even minor deviation from the "original" idea can be said to be fair use. As noted, compillations, indexes and other such listings of already published ideas or works retain copyright in and of theirselves, but only for that compillation and not necessarily for the individual entries. However, the compiler of these sorts of things must also respect copyright of the material being used.

When we post on FT, we have agreed to share our thoughts and ideas with this community under the full knowledge it can be used elsewhere, and the only copyright protection is granted to FT itself as a compillation.

If you want to protect your own ideas when posting here, perhaps you should add: ©shareholder, 2004. [The © symbol being found as an <<alt>> g entry.]