On Wed, 1 May 2002, Ballew Kinnaman wrote:

>Dear Dennis Budd and LSTOWN-L Folks,
>
>>except that for most publically accessible material
>>on the site Yahoo is granted a perpetual license
>>to use it in any way it sees fit.
>
>In my view there is not much practical difference
>between owning material and perpetual license to
>use material in *any* way, but you've made that
>distinction.

The hell there isn't.  Retaining ownership of your material means you
retain *your* right to use it any way you see fit, and *your* right to
set the conditions of its publication by others (excepting that you've
waived that right with respect to Yahoo).  That's what copyright
ownership is all about.  If Yahoo owned the material you would lose
all of those rights and Yahoo would have them exclusively.

Of course, if you have no intention of using the material in any other
way it doesn't make a whole lot of practical difference, but there are
some of us who would like to retain our rights to do so.

>
>>Yahoo makes no claim of any right to distribute
>>material that is meant to stay private.
>
>I didn't read it that way, at that time. I doubt that
>12 independent parties would have identical
>interpretations of the practical meaning of your
>phrase "material that is meant to stay private."
>I doubt that Yahoo will always see "material that
>is meant to stay private" in exactly the way you
>do. When your lawyer talks to their lawyer, other
>interpretations may surface.

Yeah they always do.  Lawyers offer all sorts of interpretations.
That doesn't mean they'll hold up in court.

Lawyers can and do always argue, but Yahoo's terms of service are
written in pretty clear English.

>
>A good test would be to have an unsubscribed third
>party try to buy the material from Yahoo, for, say,
>$50,000.
>
>If they refuse cash money, then, in practicality, your
>distinction is operative, for now.
>
>How about $250,000? How about in three months
>or three years when their chickens have come home
>to roost?

There are several questions here.

Legal: do they have the right to do it?  From the terms of service
that I read, which make no assertion of any such right, the answer is
clearly no.

Practical: would they be *stupid* enough to do it?  Legal
considerations aside, their primary interest is to stay in business.
If they did that and the word got out, how much of their subscriber
base would they lose?  If they were in trouble already, would the
damage to their reputation push them over the edge?

> >As to
>
>>*incredibly* misleading
>
>I gave my interpretation and I asked for yours. Thanks
>for your enlightening opinion.

That judgment was not directed specifically at you.  You are simply
one of a number of people who have made that interpretation.  The fact
that this seems to be the "accepted wisdom" is what annoys me, not
your personal advocacy of it.

>
>Are you also finding the list owner forum on Yahoo
>groups to be incredibly useful and helpful?

Are you kidding?

In this case I went with Yahoo groups because the people I am
co-owning the lists with already own lists on Yahoo and feel
comfortable with it.

I got the lists set up OK, but when I added members, some of the adds
consistently failed without a clue from Yahoo as to why.  I eventually
got things straightened out, but if I hadn't been an experienced list
owner already, who had some clues from the experiences of other Yahoo
groups listowners who I knew, I would never have survived the process.

Yahoo's list management documentation is a total joke.  If you stick
to the simple common questions you're OK, but get out into less
travelled territory and you might as well be falling off a cliff.

Dennis