When Richard Masoner wrote,
>| > IANAL, but if the list is unmoderated all you are doing is providing a
>| > free-speech forum. You are not acting as an editor, and thus you are
>| > protected from liability. Only the person posting -- the copyright
>| > violator -- is liable.
Chuq Von Rospach replied,
>| In theory, ti's a nice theory. In practice, I know of a number of
>| mailing lists that have been shut down over copyright issues, after the
>| list owner was notified of the infractions and chose not to stop them.
Then David W. Tamkin responded,
>That, in my view (IANALE), is the key: "after the list owner was notified
>... and chose not to stop them." One copyright violation goes through
>your unmoderated list, you swear you had no idea that such a thing could
>happen, and perhaps you get off scot-free. But then you have then seen that
>there is a problem that you can stop, but you choose to take no action, and
>your list distributes a second copyright violation.
>
>You could have made the list moderated after the first incident, but by not
>closing the barn door before another horse is stolen, you can't use that
>defense the second time.
>
>James Armstrong has determined that he hasn't the extra time necessary for
>moderating the list, and the list is already violating copyrights. He'll
>have to decide among finding the time to moderate the list, finding a
>moderator (and perhaps a new listowner) for it, closing the list, or taking
>the risks of being held responsible for the ongoing copyright violations.
Following the tradition, IANALEE. But I think moderating the list may
be more likely to incur responsibility, should you happen to slip up.
I view it more like making a photocopy machine available... if you let
people use it, they are responsible. But if you inspect its output,
now you have more responsibility for what goes out. And shutting it
down doesn't help the copyright holder's cause, since there are millions
of photocopy machines to be had (and in the case of lists, there are
many ways a determined copyright violator can get his bytes out onto
the Internet).
If copyright violations can indeed shut down unmoderated lists, then
say goodbye to any interesting ones... if Gill Bates, head of MacroHard
company, doesn't like an unmoderated list discussing his products, often
unfavorably, he just hires a couple of shills to quote his copyrighted
manuals onto the list and then goes after the list.
Not that threats don't work--I would be surprised if there aren't some
lists that have been forced out by threats (especially against the
resource provider rather than the list owner). Yet I would also be
surprised if there is any definitive case law (if for no other reason,
I've never seen any cited it when this sort of issue comes up).
Whatever happened with the digital audio tape issue?... that's probably
as close as anything to this. It was KNOWN that selling digital audio
recorders and tape would lead to copyright violations. Was that finally
settled out of court beforehand?
Cheers,
Stan
