At 1:48 PM -0500 8/12/99, Istvan Berkeley wrote:
> It seems to me that there may also be a copyright problem with the
> agreement, as stated. Although I am not a lawyer, my understanding of
> the situation is that the author of a particular e-mail message holds
> the copyright of the content of the message.
Probably not an issue. The original author holds copyright to the
message, but the list owner owns a copyright on the collection of
messages that is "the mailing list". By posting to the list, the
original author is assiging the right to redistribute to that list,
in a non-exclusive way. And then eGroups is assigning to itself a
license based on the collection's copyright.
It's all pretty straightforward here. The original author could, I
suppose, create and try to enforce a copyright on the listowner that
would conflict with the eGroups license, but the end result would
likely be that the list owner would simply have to ban the user from
posting to the list, or remove the list from eGroups to comply, and
I'd say it's very, very doubtful a court would upholod such a
copyright since the user was unilaterally attempting to circumvent a
known license.
I've had situations like this before on lists I've run, mostly where
pro-Apple people have attempted to post messsages on mail lists
banning their distribution to any microsoft site. And they always get
this really weird look on their face when I tell them the only way I
can enforce that is to ban them from the lists, so they can either
remove it or stop using my mail lists. But since I can't guarantee
their copyright restrictions will be upheld, the only way I can
manage MY legal liability is to get them to remove the restriction,
or not allow them to use my lists.... Not all of them take that in a
teambuilding way, unfortunately...
--
Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? <http://www.plaidworks.com/hockey/>)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
<http://www.plaidworks.com/> + <http://www.lists.apple.com/>
The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast...
(Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins)
