"Ben Finney" <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au> wrote in message [🔎] 87wsm9wv8s.fsf@benfinney.id.au">news:[🔎] 87wsm9wv8s.fsf@benfinney.id.au...
"Joe Smith" <unknown_kev_cat@hotmail.com> writes:"Jan Christoph Nordholz" <hesso@pool.math.tu-berlin.de> wrote in message [🔎] 20080504171443.GA17220@pool.math.tu-berlin.de">news:[🔎] 20080504171443.GA17220@pool.math.tu-berlin.de... > Is the archive granting rights without the authors' consent here? > Or does such downloading fall under "fair use"? The IF-archive has always existed for the express purpose of publishing author's Interactive fiction works, tools, and in some cases code. The very act of uploading a file fairly explicltly implies consent for personal use.The question is, what does the copyright license explicitly allow? "The act of uploading" isn't what grants freedom to the recipient. Only the terms of the license (in combination with the copyright laws of the recipient's jurisdiction) do that.
If an author (and copyright holder) places his work in an archive whose sole purpose is to diseminate copies to anybody for personal use, is that not a effeciftively a license grant to make copies for personal use? I'll admit it is a best an implicit license, but one due to a very specific and deleribate action on the part of the copyright holder.
This is somehwat academic anyway, though as Jan plans to remove the questionable works, until proper permission can be secured, possibly adding a semi-automated download option. Since people already manually download, that should be no problem. Regardless there is no real possibility that any of the authors in question would sue, and even if they did, this seems like a near textbook case for the defenses of
latches and/or equitable estoppel.However, I suspect some insight into the issue could be gathered by reading through http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/56f2f8fe64104402/b1ad0dd79b24ed37?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=if-archive#b1ad0dd79b24ed37
and determining what (if any) final conclusion was reached. I do not have the patience to read quite that many posts though.
IANAL, IANADD.