(Note, I do not run mail-archive.com, but I familiar with some its
software)
On October 29, 2003 at 19:03, Kristian =?iso-8859-15?q?K=F6hntopp?= wrote:
> Question the first: How does mail-archive.org act when a reply to one
> mail is
> sent very much later, say one to five years? The message will be a reply
> to
> the original message, with In-Reply-To headers and everything else set
> correctly, and will be part of the mailing-list that mail-archive.org is
> archiving.
>
> Context: Under german law everybody mentioned in a public message has the
> right to post his disagreeing view in the context of the original
> message.
[snip]
If you are talking one to five years, there will probably not be an
explicitly link, unless list traffic is very light. Your window of
explicit linking on mail-archive is the last 3000 messages (Jeff can
correct me if I'm wrong).
The original message will still be on the archive, but one must search
for it. Now, if some form of message-id linking was performed,
something more direct can be done, but such a thing would require
changes to the underlying software.
As for the German law, it has no jurisdiction with the U.S., where
mail-archive is located. And, IMHO, the German law you refer to
should not have been passed.
But in general, it is possible to have a mail archive system provide
explicit linking, despite the time between message replies, but
mail-archive is limited in this regard (as noted above).
> This law also applies to mailing-lists, USENET news and so on. Some
> people on
> debate asked how that law could be applied to mailing-lists, and I stated
> that simply replying to the original message will probably satisfy the
> requirements of that law. This is, because the reply message will be
> properly
> linked into the context of the original message due to In-Reply-To and/or
> References headers. Then I asked myself what an archive might do if there
> is
> more than ~1 month or so between the original statement and the reply.
> Will
> the archive still thread that message or will the thread be broken?
You make the assumption that MUAs properly define in-reply-to and
references headers. Outhouse ... excuse me ... Outlook fails miserably
in this regard.
Therefore, you assume that MUA software will play by certain rules,
and that is not always the case.
> Question the second: Is it possible for a user of mail-archive.org to
> determine which particular subscriber of a mailing-list is forwarding the
> list to mail-archive.org?
>
> From a quick look at the HTML it seems that it isn't, which I think is
> good.
You are correct wrt the HTML.
> Also, what is the policy of mail-archive.org regarding inquiries in that
> matter? That is, if asked, under what circumstances will mail-archive.org
> produce original headers of the messages sent to it, and offer the name
> of
> the submitter, that is, of the source that is feeding the archive?
Jeff can only answer this one. My guess is Jeff will refuse such
requests unless a subpoena is involved.
> Question the third: Assuming that there are two subscribers to
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] that forward their messages to mail-archive.org,
> will
> the archive detect the duplicate submissions and drop the duplicate
> copies?
For one software component that mail-archive uses, it will ignore
messages that have the same message-id to an existing archived one
(up to the 3000 message size window Jeff has specified). However,
I do not know about the details of any other dup checks done before
a mesasge reaches this component.
--ewh
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