[Vimoutliner] quoting in public from archive, is it tolerable?

[Steve Litt]

Hi Peter,

I have no objections so I won't write you in private.

First, I am not a lawyer (IANAL)...

My personal opinion has always been that once you email a mailing list, your 
email belongs to the public. A person posting to emailing to a list has 
absolutely no "expectation of privacy". "Expectation of privacy" is a 
buzzphrase of American law. If your activity has no "expectation of privacy", 
then you are not protected by the fourth amendment of the US constitution. In 
other words, I think if a person posts to a mailing list, that person gives 
implicit permission for others to further copy that info, always assuming 
such a copy is performed in context, and that the email wouldn't be 
considered a copyrightable work (source code, poem, something more than 
correspondence).

There are a few complications:

1) The "Creative Commons" license. This is an attempt to tell others how to 
use the email. I personally wish people wouldn't put that license on emails. 
Personally, I would not quote from an email with the Creative Commons 
license. Life's too short for such complications.

2) Copyrights. Perhaps some of the email is copyrighted. For instance, if I 
send out an update to vo_maketags.pl complete with a GPL license, one could 
not use the copyrighted part of the email in ways other than the 
copyright/license permits. Quoting from other parts is fine. Personally, I 
think that if anyone ever copyrighted his *whole* email, that person has too 
big an ego and too much time on his hands.

3) Flamewars, accusations etc. I would not quote an email containing a phrase 
like "Vergosynovich is an ignorant hypocrite whose intent is to ruin 
VimOutliner". Although the author gave away his expectation of privacy, you 
could be spreading slanted material at best, untruths at worst. I would not 
quote from any part of such an email, because complete context would require 
the reader to read the nastiness.

4) Those silly sigs that megacorps and law offices put on the bottom of the 
email saying that this is private information and you must not disclose it. 
Once again, life is too short to risk running afoul of that stuff -- I doubt 
it would stand up in court, but nobody wants to have to go to court to find 
out. Personally, I think that anyone whose employer insists on tacking on 
that piece of tackiness should subscribe with a personal email address, or 
none at all.

5) Patents, trade secrets, etc. These should have never made it to a public 
mailing list in the first place, and the last thing you want to do is embroil 
yourself in the poster's legal problems by copying it further.

Anyway, those are my opinions for forming the basis of what should be copyable 
and what shouldn't. 

HTH

SteveT

On Monday 23 October 2006 05:23 am, Peter Princz wrote:
> Hello world,
>
> I never had a homepage before, but now gave a try to googlepages,
> because soon I'll have to put together a site for my wife.
> Anyway, just wanted to make use of the opportunity (as alwayas :) and
> gathered all the relevant details I'd mention to an unknown human
> being.
> Of course, vimoutliner is on the top of the list. :)
>
> I took my liberty to quote some interesting thoughts that appeared on
> our list also, incl. some sentences written by others. So far I
> haven't done any "advertisement" to these pages, and I can unpublish
> if you consider it as a violation.
>
> See them here:
> http://princzp.googlepages.com/
> http://princzp.googlepages.com/vimoutliner
>
> So: do these hurt anyone here? Please feel free to send any objections
> on list or in private. Thank you!
>
> Have a nice day,
>   Peter

-- 
Steve Litt
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