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These days, almost
all things are copyrighted the moment they are written, and no
copyright notice is required.
Copyright
is still violated whether you charged money or not, only damages
are affected by that.
Postings
to the net are not granted to the public domain, and don't grant
you any permission to do further copying except perhaps the sort
of copying the poster might have expected in the ordinary flow
of the net.
Fair
use is a complex doctrine meant to allow certain valuable social
purposes. Ask yourself why you are republishing what you are
posting and why you couldn't have just rewritten it in your own
words.
Copyright
is not lost because you don't defend it; that's a concept from
trademark law. The ownership of names is also from trademark
law, so don't say somebody has a name copyrighted. Fan fiction
and other work derived from copyrighted works is a copyright
violation. Copyright law is mostly civil law where the special
rights of criminal defendants you hear so much about don't apply.
Watch out, however, as new laws are moving copyright violation
into the criminal realm.
Don't
rationalize that you are helping the copyright holder; often
it's not that hard to ask permission.
Posting
E-mail is technically a violation, but revealing facts from E-mail
you got isn't, and for almost all typical E-mail, nobody could
wring any damages from you for posting it. The law doesn't do
much to protect works with no commercial value.
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