[TriLUG] the new business discussion thread

[Mike Mueller]

On Thursday 16 October 2003 21:05, Jeremy Portzer wrote:
> 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.)

I think you are right about the copyright ownership rules.  I think those 
rules keep /. out of trouble in some cases.  They cannot edit anything in 
order to keep legal protections intact.  This says that TriLUG should not 
edit anything that comes through it or it assumes ownership of the modified 
object. Could this be an argument against email address munging? I hope not.

When I reply and quote your email above I've done the same thing Stan is 
asking permission to do.  I've publicly used your message on the Internet. We 
are keeping the attributions intact so we are playing fair.  But we did not 
explicitly ask each other to use the things we posted. 

So I conclude that people are free to describe things they read on the TriLUG 
list since it is a public list without seeking permission from the original 
poster as long as they play by the same rules that newspaper reporters use 
(the ethical ones, that is).  I am not sure that the "small quote" applies to 
email given the example above. I think this is the safest conclusion for all 
public list participants too.


-- 
Mike Mueller
324881 (08/20/2003)
Make clockwise circles with your right foot. 
Now use your right hand to draw the number "6" in the air.