On Wednesday 17 February 2010 11:09:16 Andrew Cowie wrote: > gmane archives on request of the list owner, which, while not explicit > consent on the part of the originator, is at least a relationship with > the mailing list... > > Given how long public mailing lists have been around, and given how long > public web archives of them have been available, it'd be rather hard to > construct an argument that someone _posting_ to a public list should > have an expectation that no one would be able to see their content.
These are relevant considerations, but not conclusive. As you will have seen by now another lawyer has counselled caution on this. On Wednesday 17 February 2010 11:46:31 david wrote: > It's a horror story awaiting a litigant with deep pockets. > > Is there any case law? I'm not aware of any off the top of my head. The circumstances where it would be worthwhile to a plaintiff to bring an action over something like this may not be frequent, so if anybody does take it to a lawyer they might be encouraged to let it go. However there are some people with the money and will to spend $100K or more in legal fees to make a point even though they might only get a handful of dollars if they win (and even though they might lose), so the risk is still there. Some people don't mind taking risks and don't care how large the risk they are taking is. In other cases, seek proper, considered, legal advice (and don't rely on anything you see written on a mailing list, even if two independent lawyers seem to be in agreement to any extent). -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
