[Mailman-Users] MM lists on Gmane

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Fri Sep 22 10:31:37 CEST 2006


>>>>> "Brad" == Brad Knowles <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org> writes:

At 5:09 PM -0400 9/18/06, John A. Martin quoted JC Dill:

>  Where are those restrictions expressed.  I do not see them at
>  <http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users>.  I do not see
>  them in either the subscription challenge mail nor in the welcome mail
>  pertaining to a recent subscription to mailman-users.

USC Title 17, for US users, and applicable international treaties and
local law, for the rest.

Ie, it's just a matter of copyright, which resides in the poster.
Since it is common practice for mailing lists to have public archives,
it seems reasonable to suppose that license has been granted to the
mailing list owner to keep an archive as well as redistribute to the
list.  In the case of the Mailman lists you have both an explicit
opt-in (which contains documentation of the existence of public
archives IIRC), and publically accessible documentation that there is
a public archive.  I see little risk for the Mailman lists here.

But "all rights reserved" means that other recipients do not get an
implicit license to do the same thing just because they've received a
copy.

IMHO IANAL, but I think the Mailman policy minimizes various risks.
In particular, it is not at all clear to me that posters should
believe they are delegating the right to redistribute their posts to
anybody but the mailing list owner, and I really doubt they think they
are delegating the right to give blanket permission to anybody, not even
the list owner.  I would not permit third party public archives without
talking to a lawyer first.

    Brad> That's a very valid point.  I thought we'd already covered
    Brad> this problem last time the Gmane issue came up, but
    Brad> obviously not.

Of course the policy should be documented.



-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.



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