Mailinglist privacy: MY NAME ALL OVER GOOGLE!

Bart Silverstrim bsilver at chrononomicon.com
Sat May 7 08:38:09 PDT 2005


On May 6, 2005, at 3:53 PM, Paul Schmehl wrote:

> I doubt seriously your *extremely* strict interpretation of copyright 
> would hold up in any court of law in the US or anywhere else for that 
> matter.  I have no doubt that you could find a judge somewhere to rule 
> in your favor. After all, judges make incredibly stupid rulings daily. 
>  But in the end, your argument would fall on deaf ears when saner 
> minds were engaged.

It would fall under fair use.  While the interpretation would allow 
leeway, I don't think any reasonable, sane person would have an 
expectation of privacy for posting to a technical mailing list that has 
references to the archives in a medium where quoting your material is 
expected in due course of discussion, and no one is profiting from your 
work and you're not being deprived of income because of it.

Although I do think these posts are copyrighted...you just have an 
implied consent for certain uses.  If I give a long explanation on how 
some particular technology works, you can't copy it and paste it into a 
book you're writing without my permission, and the existence of my 
posts on the archives would give me ammunition against you.

The most laughable part...the archives actually help enforce the 
copyrights he claims are being trodden on.

> When you post to a public list, your post are not copyrighted 
> material. They exist in the public domain.  And *this* list *is* a 
> public forum.

Publicly accessible, but you still own your words.  I think I already 
posted some links that talk about copyright, but wikipedia has a nice 
summary.  Electronic formats like web pages and such are still 
copyrighted because they can take a tangible form (printed out, video 
taped, etc.).  At least, that's my understanding.



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