From: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 02:08:16 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Private property & the cypherpunks list(s)
Message-ID: <3302E815.5E66@netbox.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


(Readers curious about Jim Choate's list ownership/acceptable use
policies might take a look at <http://www.ssz.com/ssz/conditions.html>.)

Jim Choate wrote:

> Please explain how making submissions de facto public domain censors
> anyone?

What the fuck is "de facto public domain"? It's public domain, or it's
not. 

Your scheme imposes a cost (loss of intellectual property rights)
against authors who would like to make themselves heard. It also
prevents a certain class of messages (those messages whose status is
"copyright claimed") from being distributed. Further, your suggestion
that posters be required to include a "fair use header" is compelled
speech.

That's three flavors of "censorship" right there. I thought that the new
list(s) were supposed to allow anyone to say anything they wanted. 

(Does "no fair use" count as a "fair use header"? It's not legally
enforceable, but it seems like the easiest way to specify "minimum fair
use required by law". If not, are you planning to moderate the list to
make sure that people use only approved fair use headers? Hmm.) 

Even if the "copyright abandonment by implication" trick works (and I
suspect it will not, given that an assignment or transfer of copyright
must be in writing, 17 USC 204; and abandonment is essentially an
assignment or transfer to the public domain), it will not apply to all
text sent to the list. A person cannot abandon or assign something they
do not have; so if someone sends a message to the list which contains
text whose copyright is held by a third party, that copyright will still
be valid. 

So what you've got is a list where you can't be sure that its contents
are public domain, and a draconian rule requiring authors to give up
their rights to what they've written.

Do you imagine that all of the many-majordomo servers will implement
your "public domain only" rule, or only yours? 

If the rule only applies to the ssz.com version, what's the point?

If the rule is intended to apply to all servers, and servers aren't
going to be allowed into the network without agreeing to implement it
locally, um, tell me again about that "free speech" thing? Aren't you
just taking advantage of your position as a person working on the
many-majordomos project to impose your ideas about intellectual property
on the rest of the list? Is such a strategy compatible with "free
speech"? 

Also, how could a rule like this possibly be compatible with a Usenet
gateway? There's no chance at all that you can expand a local rule on
your system to all of Usenet through a gateway. 

And Declan McCullagh wrote:

>I forward articles to cypherpunks that are copyrighted by my employers, or
>magazines like Playboy and Wired for which I write freelance pieces. 
>
>I like to think these articles have some value. I will not forward any of
>them, nor would I be able to, if they magically became "public domain."

Which are good points - also, don't forget that, from time to time,
people have even posted code to the cpunks list, and many software
authors like to retain copyright in their code so that they can insist
on things like noncommercial distribtion or credit where the code is
reused. If a work is truly "public domain", the author has no power to
insist on those things. 

This proposed rule seems to limit postings to those which are perceived
by their authors to be without commercial or reputational value. Is that
a good idea?

--
Greg Broiles                | US crypto export control policy
gbroiles@netbox.com         | in a nutshell:
http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto.