Re: Specific Question:

On Tue, 22 Nov 1994 gvb[_at_]acd4.acd.com wrote:
> I have been on this mailing list for about a week now. The reason I
> joined was to get information on just a couple things. I have read,
> pondered, etc, etc and still have no answers to my questions. So, here
> is my questions, as specific as I can make them:
>
> 1.) Is it legal to take, for instance, archives (whether personal or
> someone elses) of Usenet newgroups, add a text search engine, and
> distribute it as shareware for a price? Give me all the angles.

As to legality, I'll let the attorneys on the list hash it out, though as far as I know there have been no court decisions on this (I would like to be enlightened if I'm wrong). Lacking decisions, and proceeding with our understanding of copyright since Berne, it is the policy of our list that the posters of items to the list retain copyright to their original material. So, such as you propose would be infringement of copyright, as far as our list is concerned, unless you obtained permission from each poster for each item posted which you used.

> 2.) Is it legal to do the same with mailing lists?

What I said above goes double for our subscription list. Absolutley no commercial use of any sort allowed. The subscription list is the property of the list, in custody of the listowner(s) and the host site. Plus, you need to consider that many lists have state supported universities as "home." Many states have laws prohibitting the use of state property for personal, monetary, gain. The things you suggest would seem to fall in this category, so could be criminal under various state laws, even if strict interpretation of copyright law might seem to permit such activity.

I have done a few surveys on our list on matters of this sort, and the overwhelming response (we have about 3,000 direct subscribers and who knows how many using the recently established Usenet gateway and local redistribution systems) is that, while it would be better to keep the list as open as it always has been, if we, the listowners, think the list is being abused for commercial purposes (especially misuse of the subscription list), we have carte blanche to install whatever restrictions we deem necessary. And that includes shutting down the Usenet gateway, if we think significant abuse of the list is from that path. All of this paragraph is, of course, outside the realm of copyright. But listowners (at least LISTSERV listowners, don't know about LISTPROC or MajorDomo) do have the ability to severely restrict access to the lists. On lists such as ours, a professional discussion list where rapid, timely response is important, we would hate to restrict access to the list. But if that is what seems needed, we will do it.

Sorry if that last paragraph seems a bit intemperate, but with recent "spam" attacks and several requests from commercial concerns for mailing lists, I tend to get a bit hot on the topic. No offense meant to anyone. I guess the basic message would be "Keep your mitts off of our list!" (to make a cobbled-together paraphase of some responses to my last survey, leaving out the cuss words).

        Douglas Winship    Austin, Texas    winship[_at_]tenet.edu
                    Secondary AUTOCAT Listowner