Troy Rollo wrote:
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.
At least one mailing list owner that I know of stopped archiving and put
a disclaimer on everything because of threatened lawsuits. Admittedly
the list was of a personal nature, but sometimes personal things get
said in flame wars - or copyright gets breached etc etc... so this goes
beyond questions of permission to quote.
It's a horror story awaiting a litigant with deep pockets.
Is there any case law?
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