Mailinglist privacy: MY NAME ALL OVER GOOGLE!

Ted Mittelstaedt tedm at toybox.placo.com
Sat May 7 13:59:39 PDT 2005



> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Chris
> Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 11:46 AM
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: Mailinglist privacy: MY NAME ALL OVER GOOGLE!
>
>
> Anthony Atkielski wrote:
> > Chris writes:
> >
> >
> >>If thats what it comes down to - then sending emails, lists,
> bloggs, etc
> >>are all willfull violations of copyright - Oh nooooo - where do you
> >>draw the line!!!
> >
> >
> > Some are, some aren't.
> >
>
> This whole thing is silly (the isues at hand, meaning -
> copyright/FBSD-list/Google).
>
> You see - if you post on the FBSD list, even if it does not get access
> at all by anyone (meaning Google) its still public

No, it's not.  But, neither is it private.

Electronic mailing lists, website blogs, and such, are all lumped into
that wonderfully grey area of "there ain't no caselaw on this yet"

The world's legal community doesen't really know exactly what to do
with them at this point.  These medium wern't addressed during the last
Berne convention.  The closest they got was:

"The expression "literary and artistic works" shall include every
production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may
be the mode or form of its expression, such as books, pamphlets and other
writings; lectures, addresses, sermons and other works of the same
nature......
...It shall, however, be a matter for legislation in the countries of the
Union to prescribe that works in general or any specified categories of
works shall not be protected unless they have been fixed in some material
form....The protection of this Convention shall not apply to news of the
day or to miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press
information"

So, you see, going strictly by Berne you can punch holes in it as such:

1) a mailing list posting particularly a response to a question, isn't a
"work"
2) "other writings" the act of e-mail isn't "writing" at least under the
United
States, because if it was, then the DMCA would be invalidated under First
Amendment
3) Few countries have passed any kinds of laws specifying that e-mail is
or isn't
a protected work
4) Posts on a mailing list, particularly as they normally have little
applicability
to the long term, are much more in the area of "news of the day" or
"miscellaneous
facts"

And of course, a countries national laws override Berne at all times.
And as the
countries of the world have a tremendous mismatch of laws regarding the
Internet
at this time, what is legal one place isn't elsewhere, and one countries
laws aren't
enforceable on another country.

And this isn't even addressing the legal doctorine of Fair Use which
already applies
in most of these cases and would override any of the rediculous
speculation on this that has been posted already.

Ted



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