[meta] copyright and archives issues (sigh) (was Re: Where is the Searchable Applescript-users Archive?
[meta] copyright and archives issues (sigh) (was Re: Where is the Searchable Applescript-users Archive?
- Subject: [meta] copyright and archives issues (sigh) (was Re: Where is the Searchable Applescript-users Archive?
- From: Chuq Von Rospach <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 10:50:26 -0800
>
You did very clearly say the individual messages were copyright of the
>
original poster.
Yes, they are.
Okay, let's take a step back and take a fresh look at this. First, for those
looking for some non-jargonish information on copyright issues, here's a
good place to start:
<
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html>
Here's the 10,000 foot view of all of this.
When you write an e-mail, a copyright for that e-mail magically is generated
from the sea foam and attaches itself to your message. You own that. Period.
Nobody can take that away from you, and it exists until you explicitly put
that message into the public domain (for instance, when I wrote the original
USENET manners guide
<
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.announce.newusers/A_Primer_on_How_to_Wor
k_With_the_Usenet_Community> (and coined the word netiquette, FWIW) back in
about 1984, it was explicitly put in the public domain. Anyone can do
anything to it in any way, without asking me. And even if I don't like it, I
can't do anything about it. But public domain requires an explicit action.
Until you do that, you own it.
When you take that piece of email and post it to the list, you are assigning
a right-to-use for that piece of email to that list (technically speaking,
it's a one-time non-exclusive license), and giving permission for the
standard list operations to be done on it. You are not assigning ownership,
you are not giving up control, you merely saying "you can do to this what
the list normally does" -- distribute to list users, place in a digest,
stick in the archives, and (at least in theory...) make it searchable.
As part of this process, a message is placed in the archive. Apple has a
copyright on the ARCHIVE as a collective work with what is known as a
compilation copyright. That does not mean that Apple owns or controls the
individual message -- it means Apple owns the collection of ALL the messages
as a collected work.
A good reference/example of the idea behind a compilation copyright is:
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/copyr.html
What does this mean in practice? It means simply that Apple has the ability
to control how the archive is accessed and used the same way the original
author has the ability to control access and use of the original message.
Why do we claim this? To make sure the archives are used appropriately. Do
you really want your e-mail addresses (which are all over the archives)
handed over to the spammers? Do you really want J. Random User to download
the entire set of archives and start selling them on a CD-ROM? (if such a
CD-ROM were to be created, shouldn't the users who created the content
benefit in some way?) -- we need the compilation copyright to protect the
end-users from abuses of the archives, and to have the ability litigate to
stop those abuses if it comes to that.
Now, that we have this compilation copyright, what does that mean? It means
we have a say in what people do (and don't do) to/with the archives. Can you
keep private archives? Of course. Can you publish a public archive? Yes --
with permission. How do you get permission? Ask me. Why do you need
permission? Because we want to make sure any OTHER archive that's publically
available takes the same protections that we require of our own archives.
If you stick an archive on your web site and don't take steps to protect it
from the spammers, the spammers will eat it -- and when they do, APPLE will
get yelled at for letting the spammers get at the archives, even if you did
it without us ever knowing that archive existed.
That's why. We have to make sure the other archives protect you from the
spammers, because if those archives leak and get harvested by the spam bots,
it's going to be apple's fault, even if Apple had nothing to do with it.
That's why I'm worried about archives, and why I want to make sure whoever
puts one up gets permission to do so. In fact, I've given permission for an
external archive already this week. We're not anti-archives. We're against
archives that expose our users to the risks we feel those users have to be
protected against.
Hopefully, this clears up some of the issues and unhappiness that's been
swirling the last few days. I'm going to work on revising the web site to
make this clearer, so that there's less guessing and reading of tea leaves
on what the restrictions and intentions are.
--
Chuq Von Rospach, Apple Mail List Gnome
(
mailto:email@hidden) + (
mailto:email@hidden)