>In recent months I've noticed more and more Usenet posts that contain >some kind of copyright statement in the .sig, often accompanied by >statements that Alta Vista, Deja News, etc., etc., etc. are specifically >prohibited from archiving the post. I've also seen .sigs that threaten >absurdly high monetary penalties if the post is archived. > >I haven't seen anything like this on my own list, but I'm starting to >wonder about how things like this can be reconciled with having list >archives. > >Why do people object to having their posts archived? > First, although I won't be a lawyer for another 8 months or so, I've run across this issue many times, including on CYBERIA-L, the list I help manage (one of the only mailing lists I've ever seen cited in law review articles and even cited in a few court cases). Its subscribers include many of the attorneys and litigants in the Communications Decency Act. Many of the participants on that list are practicing attorneys, and many are law professors, and all of them are quite concerned not so much about copyrighting their postings, but about their posts themselves being misused or construed against them. A story: A few years ago, my Torts professor told us at the beginning of our semester that we should be free to speak our mind, no matter how off the wall -- nothing said in the classroom would be used against us at our Senate confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. :) Humor aside, the point is clear: there might be an adverse effect on free-wheeling debate if you knew that EVERYTHING you were discussing in your field of study was being recorded, logged, and made keyword searchable. >Is there something inherently objectionable about commercial archiving >services? A word about copyright. In the US, the moment you put pen to paper (or character to screen) copyright immediately attaches to that document (the law says: "an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression...") and it extends through the life of the author plus 50 years. If somebody posts to a mailing list, it doesn't necessarily mean they've given up copyright on it. I don't recall any case law on this, but I would venture a guess that when it comes to archives of a list on the listserver, that the poster could be assumed to have given an implied license to the list owner to redistribute that material. Additionally, I would imagine that since a reasonable person might assume the list is being saved somewhere (for Digest purposes, etc) and could be construed as giving license to that. However, it might not be readily assumed that the postings are being stored someplace wholly unrelated to the list or it's community of members. Somebody might have real objections to having their creations collected for somebody elses commercial gain. Let's take a hypothetical: You made it a habit of posting hilarious jokes of your own creation to the corkboard in the office lunchroom. Every evening, the head custodian of the building came through your office, read the jokes, made a copy and saved them in a folder. Then let's suppose he quit his custodial job and decided to create an encyclopedia of humor for comedians to use, and he uses your years worth of jokes in his database -- with proper attribution to you, of course. The encyclopedia is wildly popular and makes the custodian a few million dollars. Not worrying about the merits of a lawsuit, do you have a gut reaction to this? Does he owe you an money? What if the jokes were all about your mother-in-law and now there's hell to pay at home? You never intended those jokes to be available to a community other than those people in your office. > >Are listowners reponsible if LISTSERV saves posts contaning "no archive" >statements in the notebook files? > It would probably be extremely prudent to warn people in your "Welcome" letter that notwithstanding any requests in people's .sigs, EVERYTHING is being archived locally, so if they don't want it stored they'd better not post it there. (It might be nice if you also stated something in the letter like: this list is for exploration and debate of ideas about <insert topic> and all postings should be considered as being in that spirit. Points of view expressed or counterarguments raised should never be construed as necessarily being the views of those partcipating in the discussions... etc.) >I also note that a commercial service called Pangaea Reference Systems is >seeking to provide a free mailing list archive. I got a note from them >several months ago asking if it was okay to subscribe to my list, and I'm >sure a lot of other listowners did too (it was mentioned briefly on >LSTOWN-L). I just checked their web site, and so far they have obtained >permission to archive a mere 84 mailing lists, suggesting that most >listowners declined to give permission. I'm wondering if this was due to >copyright considerations, or the ethical implications of allowing a >commercial concern to profit from a mailing list (and from the labor of >listowners). The list I help manage is specifically not archived by us for all the above reasons, and we actively discourage archiving in any organized fashion. When I was brought on to help with the list, I found a half-dozen archive subscriptions to the list. They never asked permission and when they were brought to the attention of the owner, they were unsubscribed. Some lists may not be worried about this, but the members of our list were. Of course, they're all a bunch of high-tech lawyers. :) Regards, -Ray -- ------ Ray Everett-Church, Asst. Postmaster ([log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]) America Online's Internet Development Outreach and Technology Team ____ Opinion(RBE-C) != Opinion(employer(RBE-C)) iDOT:THE SPAM STOPS HERE.\ / Copyright (C) 1996 Ray Everett-Church. This mail isn't legal advice. \/ http://www.everett.org/~everett AOLers misbehaving? mail: [log in to unmask]