Ian.
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 95 03:28 GMT
From: iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: faq-maintainers@MIT.EDU
Subject: Alternative Walnut Creek letter
Eric S. Raymond writes ("Walnut Creek letter"):
> It's been a bit more than two weeks. Here is the current draft of the letter
> I propose sending to Walnut Creek.
>
> [...]
After considering this issue some more I have come to the conclusion
that this attempt to enforce what some people see as our rights may
well have the deleterious effect of extending copyright in a way I
don't want to see.
Is there any support on this list for an alternative letter to Walnut
Creek ? Something along the lines of:
We, the FAQ maintainers who are listed below, are writing to you to
tell you that we disagree with the opinion of some of our colleagues
that your actions in placing FAQs on your Internet Info CDROM without
prior permission is in violation of our copyright.
We believe that the poster of an article to USENET accepts that their
article may be distributed in a large number of different ways;
distribution of USENET newsfeeds on CDROM has long been an accepted
activity, and these newsfeeds have often been selective regarding
which groups they contain. The same is true of automatic archival of
articles on anonymous FTP sites.
We believe that a user who posts an article to USENET grants an
implicit licence to reproduce their article in this way (and in many
other ways, some of which which they may not be able specifically to
foresee) - the crucial test of whether the use is licensed being the
automatic and indiscriminate transfer and replication of the article
along with other articles matching criteria such as the newsgroups
and distributions to which they were posted.
We also hold that the posting user is themselves a party to the act
of copying: their instructions to the computer systems which comprise
USENET were to distribute their article, and this includes your
systems and eventually the CDROM in question.
We consider the USENET FAQs section of your Internet Info CDROM to be
a CDROM-based newsfeed of the news.answers USENET newsgroup,
formatted automatically in a way intended to be of most use to the
intended audience - by the Archive-Name of the posting.
We believe (please correct us if this is not the case) that the FAQs
are not formatted or edited by hand between arriving at your site and
being put on the disc.
We are therefore of the opinion that you are entitled to distribute
the FAQs in this way without seeking prior permission.
Furthermore, we recognise that you are supplying a valuable service:
that of access to (a portion of) USENET, to a population who would
otherwise be denied that benefit.
Your offer to send authors of FAQs included on your CDROM is
appreciated. Your offer to remove the FAQs on request from their
authors is also kind, though this goodwill gesture may have been seen
as an admission of weakness by some. It does not, we believe,
predudice your claim to be reproducing the whole of news.answers
automatically (since the removals must be made manually).
Suggestions and comments are welcome.
If we are going to end up sending two contradictory "position
statements" to Walnut Creek, it might be best to do so in a single
message, with an introduction saying that there has been considerable
discussion about this and that two groups disagree and both feel the
desire to express their opinions to Walnut Creek.
Ian.
[
Usenet Hypertext FAQ Archive |
Search Mail Archive |
Authors |
Usenet
]
[
1993 |
1994 |
1995 |
1996 |
1997
]
© Copyright The Landfield Group, 1997
All rights reserved