Re: [tlug] Mailing list web archives..... Is this leagal ?

[Attila Kinali <attila@example.com>]

Moin,

Sorry, for the late answer, got caught up in a lot of other stuff

On Sat, 20 Feb 2010 01:28:17 +0900
"Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com> wrote:

> Attila Kinali writes:
>  > > Tapas Chaturvedi writes:
> 
>  > >  > web archives. My question is "Is this legal to maintain web archive of 
>  > >  > different mailing list/group which you are not owning ?"
>  > > 
>  > > Technically, only if you have permission of all authors
>  > 
>  > Depends on the nature of the mailinglist.
> 
> I'm sorry, but he asked about "legal".  *Legal* does not depend on
> the nature of the mailing list, although it might depend on the
> jurisdiction.  

<mode=IANAL>
I do not know about US law, but in the european countries i know it
depends on the nature of the mailinglist. If you publicily archive
something that is already public, then there is not much anyone
can do. Or to put it into a non-virtual example: if you collect
old news papers and make your archive open to anyone who happends
to be there, then there is nothing the newspaper can do about it.
Though, you are not allowed to make copies of the newspapers and
distribute then, your "users" are allowed to take your newspapers
to the next copy machine and make copies for themselves.

Ofcourse, newspapers and mailinglists are different. While the
former is a one to many communication system of content, the later
is a many to many communication system of discussion.
Thus, while copyright law is the one that maily governs our way
how we handle newspapers, it's privacy law that mainly governs
our way how we deal with mailinglists. I.e. if you publish a discussion
of a private mailinglist on the web, you are violating privacy laws,
while if you publish a newspaper article on the web, you are violating
copyright laws.

On the other hand, if you put a transcript of an public and open
discussion somewhere on the web, privacy doesn't apply anymore,
because the discussion was public anyways. And i don't think you
can apply copyright law on this case either.

The jurisdiction of course is very important. While in the UK and
especialy US dominated world, people have to deal with copyright
law and a very weak privacy law, people in europe have a "right
of the author" law and a very strong privacy law. How these things
interact in the international field of the internet and in publishing
is still not 100% although the WIPO Copyright Treaty tries to extend
the Berne Convention into that field. Not to mention that the way
people deal with content and intellectual property changed quite
a lot in recent years and the current treaties are not up to date
with these changes.

> But that's unlikely too, as the only holdout to the
> Berne convention that mattered (the U.S.) signed up a decade or so
> ago.

I don't think the Berne Convention does touch the field of mailinglists
at all. If i understand it correctly, the Berne Convention only deals
with artistic work, which does not apply to discussions as such.
Ofcourse, you can always argue, that your mails are of such an artistic
value, that they need to be copyrighted and any unauthorized reproduction
should be prohibited, but why are you writing to a mailinglist then? ;-)

</mode>

				Attila Kinali
-- 
If you want to walk fast, walk alone.
If you want to walk far, walk together.
		-- African proverb