Re: request

[Josip Rodin <joy@cibalia.gkvk.hr>]

On Fri, May 04, 2001 at 07:37:52PM +0100, Sergio Brandano wrote:
>   ( I hope "listarchives@packages.debian.org" is not a mailing list
>   itself; I believe I posted my message to the main listmaintainer. )

I'm afraid that it's also a mailing list -- that address points to
debian-www@lists.debian.org. There is no single "main listmaintainer" for
the web site list archives, we are a team that's coordinated via a public
mailing list.

>   I am not happy about the way these (my) emails are used, as Debian
>   is acting as a publishing company. In fact, Debian is archiving,
>   indexing and allowing re-publication of these emails by third party
>   sites, and this goes *well beyond* the mere posting of an email to
>   a list of friends. As I own the copyrights of my emails,
>   I do not want Debian to copy and allow others to copy my emails.
>   This is a mere copyright issue, and Debian has been infringing my
>   copyrights.
> 
>   Please, either erase my messages from your archives or implement
>   some other solution to the problem I am rising.

Personally, I don't see a problem. I believe that by posting a message to a
mailing list that is publically archived you implicitely indicated your
consent with also publically archiving the message you posted, because we
have been archiving messages since the very beginning of the lists (not all
of those archives have survived till today, unfortunately).

Besides, the mere act of using a mailing list is copying and having others
copy an email. Whether the mail is kept as a mail in a mailbox of every list
subscriber, or as a mail in a HTML page for every WWW viewer, it's still the
same thing.

This, of course, isn't a lawyer's opinion :) And I am thus CC:ing some
people who might have more clue than me. Hmm, I'm CC:ing another mailing
list, I bet you're not going to like that. Crap. You simply cannot
communicate with "Debian" as a group without using a mailing list. (Well,
theoretically you could get a couple of hundred personal emails and use
that, but this would most likely not produce postive effects :)

> PS.
>   Please note also that the technical content of these emails is
>   summarised in updated FAQ documents, so that these months/years
>   old emails are of no use, and there is no purpose in allowing sites
>   like AltaVista to index them all!!!

I disagree -- there is significant value in list archives as a historical
reference of the development of the Debian Project and community around it.

We don't aim to "publish" the emails or anything, we just archive them to
have them available if needed. And since everything we do is public, this is
public, too.

> Reply From: Josip Rodin <joy@cibalia.gkvk.hr>
> 
>  > I don't believe we've ever removed emails from the list archives,
>  > and I don't think we're going to start.
> 
> 
> From: Sergio Brandano <sb@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>
> 
>  > Dear Maintainer,
>  >
>  > Please erase any mail that I have posted to your lists,
>  > searching by name ("Sergio Brandano") and by address.
>  >
>  > This request is urgent, and triggered by the fact that
>  > this material does not rest within the Debian premises.
>  >
>  > The content of my messages was spread on the net,
>  > *including* republishing by commercial archival and
>  > indexing sites, and I do not want this to happen.
>  >
>  > So, please, erase any messages of my authorship that
>  > you happen to have in your archives.
>  >
>  > Please get back to me with an e-mail, confirming that
>  > the requested operation has been successful.
>  >
>  >
>  > Thank you.
> 
> 

(full quotes included for the others to see what we were talking about)

-- 
Digital Electronic Being Intended for Assassination and Nullification