[TriLUG] the new business discussion thread

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Thu, 2003-10-16 at 19:56, Mike Mueller wrote:

> That's courteous to ask.  But now you have me thinking.  I don't think you 
> need to ask for permission to quote what is on the web.  What was written was 
> committed to the public.  You're probably free to take anything out there as 
> long as you attribute your sources.  I don't know if TriLUG owns/claims 
> copyrights the list content does it...or can it?

Actually, Mike, emails and mailing list postings are owned by their
authors, and implicitly copyrighted as such.  Obviously people here know
that their postings are going to a public archive.  But that doesn't
change who wrote and owns the email.

Stan is correct to ask permission to use these authors' writings. 
Otherwise all he really could do legally is link to the mailing list
archives, or use small quotes that are allowed per the "fair use"
doctrine.  These quotes must of course be attributed accordingly; any
other use would be plagiarism.

IANAL, but this is how I understand it.  (As an employee of an academic
institution, these are things I have to deal with fairly regularly.)

Regards,
Jeremy Portzer

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