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