On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 11:33:46AM +0100, Sergio Brandano wrote:
>
>
> > So far, only James Miller and Florian Lohoff have shown a correct
> > reading of this discussion. An explicit OpenContent agreement is
> > indeed the way to go.
>
> I forgot to mention Sam TH, whose contribution basically says that
> *if* Debian has the right to keep an archive of a posted mail
> (which is not the case), this does not imply the right of others
> to copy/mirror and index these mails.
I would like to point out that I don't believe I said anything of the
sort. I believe that you granted implicit right to archive your
messages by sending them to this, and other mailing lists.
Furthermore, that implicit right extends to any archiver, and not just
to official archivers.
It is correct that further republication of your emails may be
actionable. Finally, indexing is certainly legal.
> A friend of yours has mentioned that Debian charges 1000$ for each
> SPAM mail. Assuming this is correct and that no other prices are
> given, this may easily imply that this is indeed Debian's own
> cost/value per mail. A certain commercial site is now listing about
> 450 regular mail of mine, which overall value is then of about 0.5
> Million Dollars. Debian is publishing my mail, and is doing it
> illegally. A number of other sites are also mirroring and indexing,
> and they are doing it illegally. So, dear Mark, if I were *not* a
> friend, I would not be here wasting my time with you, but I would be
> having pretty good time with the money that Debian and the other
> sites owe me. As you can see, I am a good friend.
>
> However, there are "friends" out there who are not yet aware of their
> wealth, and are not as friendly as I am. A single broadcast message
> would be sufficient for one of them to have a few megabytes of
> lawyers' replies to it, each of them being very willing to take any
> risk and go all the way to sue Debian. It is not difficult to foresee
> that this person is not going to be the only one, and that the
> Debian/GNU project will shut down because of it (think of Napster,
> its arrogance, and the outcome). Certain software companies would be
> very sympathetic on the matter, and would provide all the additional
> legal support, perhaps also for free. Chances are that this is
> already happening, as this very debate is now on the web (as some of
> you has previously reported).
This sounds distinctly like blackmail. I advise against continuing in
this vein.
Futhrmore, the price for being able to send commercial email to this
list is 1000 dollars. That in no way implies that each mailing list
message is "worth" 1000 dollars. In fact, the US Copyright statutes
do not have any measure that operates in the way you describe for
determining compensation and damages.
Finally, note again that Debian does not actually legally exist, and
cannot be therefore sued.
sam th --- sam@uchicago.edu --- http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
OpenPGP Key: CABD33FC --- http://samth.dyndns.org/key
DeCSS: http://samth.dynds.org/decss
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