From: Jim choate <ravage@wixer.bga.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 94 09:40:35 PST
To: jazz@hal.com (Jason Zions)
Subject: Re: Archiving mail-lists...
In-Reply-To: <9402011530.AA13741@jazz.hal.com>
Message-ID: <9402011727.AA04285@wixer>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>
>
>    I would be interested in a discussion on the mail-list on this
>    issue. Please refrain from sending personal mail. In particular do you
>    think such a archive without every members permission is un-ethical?
>
> Unethical, hell; illegal is closer to it. I retain the copyright to
> everything I post; although implicit permission to redistribute to the
> mailing list is granted when I send to cypherpunks@toad.com, I have granted
> no permission to anyone else to use my intellectual property (i.e. my posts,
> valuable or not) for any other purpose.
>
>    Would a archivist necessarily need the permission of the mail-list
>    sponser?
>
> In an actively-moderated group (i.e. where the moderator chooses which
> messages to forward, constructs digests, etc.) the moderator possesses a
> copyright on the collection of material (but not on the material itself); if
> you were republishing a substantial part of the collection (in your case,
> all of it) you'd need rights to the collection copyright also.
>
> Study copyright law (including the Berne Convention, to which most nations
> having Usenet sites are signatories). Understand what you're getting
> yourself into.
>
> Jason
>

It is no more illegal (at the present time) for me to store your posting to
every usenet or inet service that I have access to on my hard-drive or a CD-
Rom for re-sale than it is for you to store my posting on your drive or print
it out to the printer.

When I got my account I did not sign any kind of agreement relating to me
retaining my rights to any material I chose to place on the net for
dissimenation to others. There IS an implied motivation to put that material
in the public domain so that others may use it for the betterment of all.

If you are serious about your view then please forward a money order for
$1000 dollars for having my original post stored on whatever medium you used
to reply to it.

There is no legal precedence at this time that would necessarily and
automaticaly copyright every entry I (or you) made, Berne not withstanding,
to inet or usenet. If that position is valid then each and every one of us is
commiting copyright infringement for storing the material on a hard drive.
When discussing copyright there is no involvment in medium of transmission
other than what the original author limits it to prior to release of that
material.

The motivation for bringing this topic up is that it provides a perfect way
to make the commen wide-spread usage of encryption a commen and everyday
occurance. Namely, authors who wish to retain all rights should do one of two
things. They should either encrypt the file and require potential users to
contact the author or distributor for keys to unlock it or else it should be
mandator for a author to put some sort of fair-use statement in their
releases that specificly delineates what the fair-use of that material is.
Users of usenet/inet do not read minds and can't necessarily imply what the
original motivation was, this means (to me anyway) that the responsibility of
enlightening potential users falls solely on the shoulders of the author.