A very valid point indeed but an internal/private mailing list would
have controlled subscription and if seen inappropriate the list-admin
would refuse subscription/membership.  On the other hand if the
list-admin prefers to be indexed the s/he could grant membership.

Of course there is the situation where some evil-archiving company may
subscribe as an 'innocent' user without telling the list-admin of h/er
purpose and then use the privilage to index/archive the content.  

If its just an index, still the content of the index is safe from people
without access rights to your archives and you have only compromised an
index.  (How critical this is depends on the site.)

If it’s a full blown archive of your content then I think it becomes a
fairly simple legal issue.  There might be some sense including some
sort of warning against the re-distribution of list content in welcome
messages to people who subscribe to save on the extent of your legal
costs.

Best,
Omer.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: LISTSERV site administrators' forum 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Pete Weiss
> Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2004 4:45 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Google, the Deep Web, and LISTSERV Archives
> 
> 
> Regardless of LISTSERV web technology, other archiving 
> companies may subscribe to your list[s] for the sole purpose 
> of archiving its distributions.
> 
> /Pete
>