John, It is highly unlikely you would have any success in suing for copyright infringement over an archive of a message you sent to a public mailing list.
As the author of a text, you have certain rights regarding control over who can make copies, transcribe, etc. However copyright is not an absolute. There are circumstances in which someone can copy a text without the permission of the rights holder. At a glance, the two I can think of off the top of my head are fair use/fair dealing and implied license. First, people have a right to use a text under the fair use doctrine. There is no hard and fast rule over what constitutes fair use, but making an archival copy for providing access to others seems to fall within fair use. Google just won a case where they were being sued for copyright infringement over their archiving of web pages. They are a commercial company, they were archiving and displaying the entire page, not just a portion, and they still won on fair use grounds. Second, if you publish a text on a website, you retain the copyright, but when a person (in the use of a browser) requests that text and your web site sends it to them, you are, legally, granting an implied license to that person to make a copy of the text in order to display it on their screen (as making a copy is the only way for the browser to function). Similarly this is public mailing list. When you send a text to the mailing list, you are implicitly commanding that the text be copied and distributed to everyone on the list. Those copies are further copied into individual mailboxes, backup tapes, archives, etc. There is, along with that command, an implied licence for those copies to be made. Otherwise, you could send an e-mail to the list and then sue the list owner for copyright infringement for every copy of your message that was sent out. In short, RIAA and MPAA propaganda to the contrary, you as copyright holder don't have an absolute say over what happens to your text. All that being said, I'm not making a moral or ethical argument about this. I agree it might be good to respect the *wishes* of the list members about where their e-mails are archived, but that's not the same thing as having a *right* to prevent it. http://www.eff.org/IP/blake_v_google/google_nevada_order.pdf -- Mark > -----Original Message----- > From: > framers-bounces+mark.levitt=betfair.com at lists.frameusers.com > [mailto:framers-bounces+mark.levitt=betfair.com at lists.frameuse > rs.com] On Behalf Of Stuart Rogers > Sent: 26 January 2006 17:43 > To: John Posada > Cc: Framers List > Subject: Re: add Framers list to gmane.org? > > John Posada wrote: > >I could get an email from > > someone at your company asking for more information. > > > > If that happens, I WILL be contacting your legal department on > > copyright infringement and I HAVE retained the posts on > this thread as > > proof that I don't approve of my posts being used. > > > > Of course, you could sneak around the wishes that anyone > else may have > > by remembering to just not use my post but ignore the > wishes of anyone > > else, whether they've participated in thread or not. > > > > I don't think anyone else who practices copyright violation > and gets > > caught expected to get caught either. > > John, > > If you are of such strong opinion that simply publishing a > URL (which is nothing more than an address) constitutes > copyright violation, why did you ask us all to do it for you? > ( http://tinyurl.com/8dn69 ) Do you also plan to threaten > legal action against Google, Yahoo, and all the other search > engines that publish links to your postings in response to > keyword searches? > > Or have you just missed Jakob's point altogether, that he is > not reproducing a single word of your copyright-protected > public postings but is simply telling others that they exist > and pointing to their location? > > I do not understand your reaction. > > -- > Stuart Rogers > Technical Communicator > Phoenix Geophysics Limited > Toronto, ON, Canada > +1 (416) 491-7340 x 325 > > srogers at phoenix-geophysics dot com > > "Please reinstall the application you want to remove." > --Microsoft Windows 'unInstall Specialist' > > Get Firefox! > http://tinyurl.com/8q9c5 > _______________________________________________ > > > You are currently subscribed to Framers as mark.levitt at betfair.com. > > To unsubscribe send a blank email to > framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com > or visit > http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/mark.levit > t%40betfair.com > > Send administrative questions to lisa at frameusers.com. Visit > http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. > > ______________________________________________________________ > __________ > In order to protect our email recipients, Betfair use SkyScan from > MessageLabs to scan all Incoming and Outgoing mail for viruses. > > ______________________________________________________________ > __________ >
