On Sat, May 05, 2001 at 02:41:33AM -0400, Brian Ristuccia wrote:
> On Fri, May 04, 2001 at 09:56:01PM -0500, Sam TH wrote:
> >
> > You could easily write a streaming SMTP client. Sure, it's a bad
> > idea, but that never stopped copyright law before. The choice of
> > whether to record has everything to do with the reciever, and nothing
> > to do with the medium.
> >
>
> A streaming SMTP server would still make copies in memory during its
> operation. But this is not a valid argument anyway since it's widely known
> standard practice that SMTP servers not only can make copies, but that they
> must make copies during the course of their operation. (Not to mention
> returning 200 for a DATA command before you've safely written the message to
> nonvolatile storage probably violates the transaction model specified in
> rfc821.)
But a TV player on a computer would do the same thing.
> > But recall also that the defense was that the use fell under "fair
> > use". What Debian does with emails sent to the listserv certainly
> > does not qualify as "fair use". Also, the NDA applied only to some of
> > the letters, and Random House lost on all of them.
> >
>
> We don't need to invoke a fair use defense because no infringement occured.
> Placing the message into the archive(s) is an action implicitly authorized
> by the copyright holder when they post their message to an archived public
> list.
>
This basically boils down to this: how do we know about that implicit
permission? Does it still hold if the author denies it?
Unfortunately, I suspect this is unanswerable without a court. :-(
Still, we shouldn't take his messages out of the archives.
sam th --- sam@uchicago.edu --- http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
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