> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Mike Hauber > Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 9:31 PM > To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > Subject: Re: favor > > > On Friday 04 February 2005 11:52 pm, Anthony Atkielski wrote: > > Mike Hauber writes: > > > > MH> Not wanting to jump into this, because I think the whole of > > the MH> argument is ridiculous... But, in a nutshell... > > Aren't you MH> trying to make the same argument that SCO is > > trying to make? > > > > I'm not familiar with SCO's argument. The principles of > > copyright have existed for a long time. People seem to think > > that the Internet is somehow a "copyright-free" zone, where > > anyone can do anything, but that just isn't the case, as > > accumulating jurisprudence proves. > > > > MH> (all due respect, of course) I just don't see the validity > > of "I MH> don't care if the code was legally released to the > > open source MH> communities eons ago! I don't care how much > > time and effort has MH> been spent building on it. It's mine > > and I want it back!" > > > > Explicitly releasing something and "implicitly" releasing it > > are two different things. In general, one never implicitly > > relinquishes a copyright. In some domains of IP, this happens: > > the failure to actively defend a trademark can cause it to be > > lost, for example. But copyrights remain, even if nothing is > > done to defend them, and copyrighted material is never > > implicitly licensed to anyone. > > > > If I were to send you an email and a header (or signature) stated > that you were not privy to the contents of the email, then you > could be in serious trouble. By sending the email to you, I am > implying that you are allowed to view it. >
Correct. > On a public forum (such as this) where there is growth, it is > logically implied (if I have any sense) that if I were to post to > this forum, it would not only be available on the mirrored lists, > but on the future mirroring lists as well. I would be foolish to > assume otherwise. > Mike, this is where the crotch of the matter is. Anthony is from the camp of people out there who want to have the law make the rediculous assumption that ALL posts on public forums are absolutely positively verifyable. The case law he's talking about is arising from incidents, mainly right now on stock trading forums and such, where a poster has repeatedly posted verifyable information of who he is to the point that everyone trusts that postings made that contain his 'stamps' are indeed from him - the poster then one day posts some copyrighted trade secret that causes a stock run or some such - someone loses hundreds if not thousands of dollars - then next thing you know the lawyers are in there. However if an incident occurred where one day a post appeared on one of these stock forums from a poster that nobody has ever heard of before, that was attributed to Mr X, that contained copyrighted trade secrets of Mr Y, then the poster never appeared again, there's extremely little chance that Mr. Y could successfully sue Mr X if Mr. X were to claim he'd never heard of such a forum or of Mr. Y before. Of course such a post probably wouldn't be believed by most of the investors on the forum, so it's doubtful that it would have any effect. Now you see the dilemma of Mr. X in these situations - to cause trouble, he has to implicate himself beyond a reasonable doubt, - which makes it easy to sue him and win. Thank God that so far in this country the courts aren't run by people as stupid as to not be able to distinguish the facts of these matters. Anthony does have a few things right but he's stirring in a lot of wishful thinking with a few facts. Yes, everything is copyrighted. Yes, if I make a post I'm not giving my copyright up to the forum. But NO, that doesen't mean the forum has no right to publish. That is why there are such things as a "right to publish" and it is different then the copyright. Also keep in mind that a LOT of the copyright activity we are seeing is over the issue of software copyrights - because way back a long time ago there was no body of law available to protect against software piracy, so the software vendors decided to use the fiction that their software was the same thing as a book or painting, thus making it elegible for copyright status. However most folks in the business realize the problems of this and the software industry is working on creating an entirely separate legal animal called a "software license" that contains some good bits out of copyright case law, and some good bits out of product patent law. The difficulty is that while copyright has the Berne convention that is globally effective, software patenting and licensing has no such global agreements. So we are going to see that tie in with software and copyrights for a good long time yet, maybe another century even. Just don't get the idea that some of the stuff that has come out of that effort - like the DMCA - are going to get applied to copyrights on speech and the press (despite the fact that the authors of the DMCA would probably love this) In any case, be also careful with the mirrors. Currently a mirror has no legal status other than that of a fair use. A poster like Valerie has complete legal basis to demand a mirror remove a post by revoking their right of fair use. Yet another quagmire to get into as you can imagine. > > MH> Don't get me wrong. I've made public posts that I look > > back and MH> cringe on because I know it's still out there > > somewhere. Hell... MH> Maybe there's only two of us. That's > > life, and we live it MH> anyway. > > > > In many cases, you can force those posts to be removed from > > venues to which you did not originally post them and for which > > you never reached any type of licensing agreement. People > > regularly do this in the case of Google, for example. > > Why is that? Google isn't reposting the information. Not true, they are reposting it. Even if all they are doing is posting 1 line plus a little context, that is a repost, ie: a publish, and it's only allowable under Fair Use, and Fair Use rights only exist if the copyright holder doesen't say they don't exist. > > > > MH> Fact is, the cats out of the bag, and I have yet to meet a > > cat MH> that likes bags. :) > > > > The cat is being pushed back into the bag rather rapidly. The > > legal profession was slow to apply the law to the Internet, but > > it is learning fast. The fact that so few people have chosen to > > enforce their copyrights doesn't mean that these copyrights > > don't exist or cannot be enforced. And woe to those who feel > > that they can flagrantly infringe with impunity; eventually > > they may come across someone who doesn't feel the same way and > > has the will and the resources to sue. > > In that case, this email is absolutely copyrighted by me (along > with my email address, my middle initial, Mother's maiden name, > SSN, and my recipie for coffee)... And just the same, I don't > think I'll jump on any bandwagons and sue Google for their great > service, even if they do cash this page from a future > freebsd-questions archive mirror. :) > Under current law you don't have to say that your post is copyrighted, it is when you post it, automatically. What Anthony and his ilk want is for you to have to sign a form telling the FreeBSD mailing list that they have permission to publish it - for each individual post of course, and for each time it's accessed - which would in fact if this ever happened, pretty much destroy the usability of public mailing lists. Legally if such a law ever happened I would have the legal right to have the FreeBSD mailing list turn over it's list of e-mail addresses so that I could individually give consent for FreeBSD's mailing list to e-mail to each and every one of those e-mail addresses. That is how rediculous this could get, and unless the courts are ever stuffed with moron judges, it will never happen. Ted _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
