Having dared to step away from this list for about 18 hours, I come
back to find myself about a hundred messages behind in this whirlwind
discussion. Now that I'm caught up, I'll add my own thoughts.
As a practical matter, I don't share Dennis B-K's distinction of this
list as a "private" group. When I write here, I assume it's exactly as
private as whatever I write in a Usenet group. That is, I take it for
granted that my words are going to find their way out to the wide world
of the Web.
Nevertheless, I would still support Dennis's request to
openSubscriber.com to take down all of my messages. Even in a public
forum, the writer still holds copyright and thus has the right to limit
redistribution. I have no major objection to a third-party archiver
per se, but I do prefer not to be quoted at length without attribution,
and I'd prefer not to have my words end up in someone's book some day
without permission. To whatever extent OpenSubscriber's distribution
makes that more likely, it's a negative for me, and the only offsetting
positive is that they offer convenience to some of my friends on the
list who like to search the list archives. It's not a huge deal to me
either way, but on the whole, I'd rather they don't republish me, so if
the law gives me the right to tell them no, I want to exercise that
right.
There's something to be said for nipping this in the bud wherever
possible. I've had plenty of experience with my articles on the Web
being redistributed without attribution (and occasionally with false
attribution). Every few months I try to chase them all down and send
polite emails to the offenders. Most of them respond politely -- the
offense is usually done in ignorance, not malice. A few of them don't.
The least responsive are the companies which are harvesting content en
masse with their giant digital dragnets, repackaging it all as their
own for click-through profits. I confess I have developed a distaste
for such companies.
Alas, I lack the energy to pursue this much, and whatever attention I
do give it isn't going to go to archives of *this* list. Still,
Dennis, if in your correspondence with OpenSubscriber you develop a
sort of petition for those of us who would deny reprint permission for
our copyrighted posts, I will happily join in signing.
I doubt that a lawsuit will go far, since the court is not likely to
award more than financial damages -- ie, what it costs the copyright
violatEE, not what it profits the violatOR -- and I don't think there's
much damages that can be demonstrated from anything on this list.
Still, the first step is to formally request that they cease and
desist, so that it is at least established that if they continue to
reprint us they are in willful violation of the law.
mdl
P.S. Somewhere in this discussion, someone mentioned the public
domain. I love the public domain, and I sure with there were more of
it. I think the world would be a better place if copyright terms were
rolled back drastically. But it really pisses me off that whenever
copyrights and the public domain are tweaked, no matter which way the
argument is going, it always seems to turn out that big media
corporations win and small publishers and artists lose -- so that in
order to "support the public domain" all of my writings have to become
free to any taker, but at the same time in order to protect Mickey
Mouse, I can't have Irving Berlin's "God Bless America".
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