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General Resolution: Declassification of debian-private list archives



Avid debian watchers will have noticed the proposed GR
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/11/msg00024.html
and perhaps the related debates in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/

I'm posting here to ask: do you think this is legal?

My understanding was that debian mailing lists operated
in a similar way to Usenet: by posting, an author is
commanding or at least permitting the sort of copying one
might expect for a post. (See, for a summary, myth 3 on
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html ) We do not have
copyright permission for other use unless it's explicitly given,
so we should not republish old messages without consent unless it's
fair dealing or fair use or similar. It would be rather silly for
debian to be accused of violating the copyright of past DDs.

I can see the attraction of openness: I hope that some of the
religious intolerance and other stupidities would go away if
there is possible publication. I think consent should be required
before publishing past posts, which is the current situation,
so I will vote for the amendment to only apply the process to
new posts.

Morally, I think it's indefensible to have promised to restrict
-private's circulation and then to break that promise and
publish without permission. But is the approach in the GR legal?

Thanks for any advice,
-- 
MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/  irc.oftc.net/slef  Jabber/SIP ask



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