On Tuesday 16 February 2010 09:59:37 [email protected] wrote: > I am not a lawyer, but structly speaking, I believe that copyright in > the individual members' posts resides with the poster. So > theoritcally you';d have to ask all the people who post to all the > mailing lists. > > In practice though it doesn;t matter --- in sending something > to a mailing list one implcitly gives permission to all the consumers > of that list, including third party archive sites, to reproduce the > message.
Peter's comments on the key principles that apply are mostly correct. The only thing I would add is be careful in relying on implied consent. The scope of implied consent in the case of mailing list traffic is not something that is entirely certain. Implying consent for a person to quote a message in reply (such as in the quote above, for example), or for the list owner to keep an archive, is likely to be easier than implying consent for third party archiving. If somebody whose posts on a mailing list were to go and sue a third party archiver the answer would likely only be determined after some disproportionately expensive litigation that would end in tears for everybody except the lawyers. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
