On Tue, 21 Apr 1998, Juntung Wu (JT) wrote:
> 1. If the message is a very embarassing nature, then perhaps you should
> consider deleting it, to protect other people's privacy.

What privacy are you talking about?  The item has ALREADY been posted to
the list and EVERYONE has already seen it, else it would not be in the
archives.  The listowner is not responsible for highly embarrasing
personal items sent to the list by the careless.  One does not delete
ones own poorly thought out items, nor anyone else's.  The archives
are sacrosanct, not to be touched but for technical emergency.

If you modify the archives on whomever's whim, best not have them at
all as you do NOT have archives.  We have seven and almost a half years
and they are pristine but for modification to three items to change
small character strings which cause some peoples systems to malfunction.
The archives are the archives, damn it!

> 4. On a more serious legal note, depending on your state law, the message
> that the person sent to you has already become YOUR property, and

No, I don't think so.  Under the Geneva convention, to which the US is
sigantory (the states have no say in the matter) the author of an original
compostion, regardless of medium, retains copyright at least for his
liketime, unless the right is specifically abrogated.  Our policy is
that posting to the list grants the right to read and recover from the
archives to subscribers, but further copying and forwarding requires
permission from the author of the item.  That's the theory.  It is very
nearly the practice on one of my lists.  On 'tother, while agreeing with
the theory, the coowner keeps doing things which make total hash of the
practice, no way to check on who is doing what with anything.  Which is
another reason not to tamper with the official archives; it's probably
pointless.

If you are going to have archives you should be able, with a clear
conscience, to swear that the archives are complete and have not
been modified, other than to correct technical glitches which were
a continuing problem.

Douglas