OT: SCO Forum

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 05:49:29PM -0400, Fairlight wrote:
> Four score and seven years--eh, screw that!
> At about Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 10:37:42AM -0400,
> Jay Ashworth blabbed on about:
> > 
> > If you're going to participate in mailing lists, experience has proven
> > that It Would Be Good If you didn't do it from an email account with
> > such a tag appended to messages, as it can, among other things, call
> > into question the legality of online archives of such messages.  Some
> > mailing lists will simply unsubscribe you.
> 
> You sure about that?  I've heard the claim that once you send it and the
> recipient (whomever that is) receives it, it's theirs, period.  They can do
> what they like with it, same as sending regular postage.  I don't think any
> amount of fancy boilerplate is going to change that, assuming it's true in
> the first place.
> 
> Basically, if it hits your inbox, you're supposed to "own" that copy of
> the message.  So I've been told, anyway.

Publishing it, which is sort of what archiving is, is the precise point
where it becomes an issue, actually, from what I gather.

> Let's put it this way:  What happens if someone buys a book and ships it to
> your name at your address because the secretary screwed up shipping?
> You've (to my knowledge) no obligation to return it.  You're still bound by
> copyright law regarding the book, of course.  But as an article, you
> basically received that as "a gift" (albeit unintentionally), did you not?

Yeah, but that's different<tm>.

> I've read about the new sneakwrap licensing they're actually putting into
> books now in just such a situation.  One doctor received a professional
> reference by mistake, and by the time he opened it and found the license,
> then -read- the license, he wasn't even allowed to give it back, resell it,
> or even destroy it.  He ended up owning something he could do nothing
> which, for which he didn't ask in the first place.

I believe that's actually not legally supportable.

Publishing a letter you're on notice not to, though, is a different,
and much less opaque issue.

Cheers,
-- jr 'I think' a
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? 
     
     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?