Digital BW, The Print

Yahoo's privacy statement is not really the issue, here. As I understand
copyright law in relation to correspondence (and I have investigated this in
relation to two books I have worked on), if I send you a letter, you own the
physical letter, but I still own the words. You can sell the letter, but you
cannot publish it without getting my permission to do so. This has been
tested in numerous cases, one of the most recent prominent ones being a
biography of J. D. Salinger, who successfully prevented letters he had
written to the author many years before from being published; instead, the
author had to paraphrase them.

By analogy, Yahoo! owns the magnetic or optical medium on which this content
exists and the particular encoding of that information on that media. We
give them permission to publish our posts when we join the list. You own the
disks on which your particular copy of any e-mail you received resides and
you own the particular encoding of that e-mail on those disks. But you do
not have the right to publish that information without the permission of the
authors of that material because we did not, individually, give you
permission to republish our words. Simply offering, after the fact, to
remove the content from your site of any authors who object to its inclusion
does not make you any less liable. Your may argue (and seem to be arguing)
that the material is "public," and so you can publish it without permission
of the copyright holders, but that is not the case, either. The New York
Times, for example, is also public, but republication of any of their
articles would also put you in peril of a lawsuit.

Strictly speaking (and I can't see any reason not to speak strictly in
matters of copyright violation), you should remove all material from anyone
on this list from your site and then seek written permission from any
members who do wish to have their posts included.


- David

-----Original Message-----
From: greg_pop [mailto:greg@...]
Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 3:47 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] The Photo Binbook - a new resource about
Photography


Hi Julian,

I believe you are mistaken about Yahoo's privacy statement. They
don't want people posting copyrighted materials into their own
servers. This is not what I did.

In this case, I subscribed to the mailing list and received emails
sent by whoever posted them. Yahoo acted as a post office to
distribute the mail. I don't believe that it gives them any
ownership on the material they transported.

As for the copyrights of the authors of messages, I do acknowledge
them and that is why I will remove messages of those who request it.

Brad Templeton, the chairman of the EFF (Electronic Frontier
Foundation, the leading foundation protecting liberties and privacy
in cyberspace) has a web page at:

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

which explains in layman's terms copyright law applied to the
internet. In particular, it says:

" 10) "They e-mailed me a copy, so I can post it."
To have a copy is not to have the copyright. All the E-mail you write
is copyrighted. However, E-mail is not, unless previously agreed,
secret. So you can certainly report on what E-mail you are sent, and
reveal what it says. You can even quote parts of it to demonstrate.
Frankly, somebody who sues over an ordinary message would almost
surely get no damages, because the message has no commercial value,
but if you want to stay strictly in the law, you should ask first. On
the other hand, don't go nuts if somebody posts E-mail you sent them.
If it was an ordinary non-secret personal letter of minimal
commercial value with no copyright notice (like 99.9% of all E-mail),
you probably won't get any damages if you sue them. Note as well
that, the law aside, keeping private correspondence private is a
courtesy one should usually honour. "

Because in this case the correspondance was not secret (indeed it
is archived in a public, open to all, web site), I don't think I
committed a serious offense. If I did, then Google groups and a
multitude of other sites are guilty as well.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Julian Thomas"
<julianthomas@t...> wrote:
> this is not off topic as whatever is posted to this group may be
used,
> without permission, by a commercial venture. what you think doesn't
matter,
> just check the statements made by Yahoo about what people are
allowed to do
> with posts to Yahoo listservs. They are very specific. They
specifically
> exclude the appearance of posts made to a yahoo list on another
site. They
> even have a standard form to fill in to notify them of copyright
violation.
> I've filled it in.
>
> Julian
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ricardo Lagos" <ricardo@s...>
> To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y...>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 9:21 PM
> Subject: Re: [Digital BW] The Photo Binbook - a new resource about
> Photography
>
>
> > I am still very surprised by the level of response to the
binbook -- some
> of
> > the posts are just shy of threatening legal action ..
> >
> > .. i think that the posts that we've all made to this forum are
hardly a
> > money making venture -- BW digital photography is in such a state
of
> > infancy -- that sharing information will create a market where
money can
> be
> > made -- but not sharing that information will not further the
market ..
> >
> > these posts are freely available -- and wether i can see them on
> > www.yahoo.com .. or www.photobinbook.com .. makes a small
difference --
> that
> > a court would have to decide over -- not users in the BW forum..
> >
> > .. i think that as long as greg provides a way for users to
remove their
> > posts from the archive .. he's done his part ..
> >
> > .. i wonder if we can move this thread to off-line discussion --
since the
> > rest of the group does not need another storm of OFF-TOPIC posts.
> >
> > -- ricardo
> >
> >
> >
> > Please visit the Group Homepage to check the Files, Bookmarks,
Polls and
> other resources as they are often being updated. The page is at:
> >
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint
> >
> > Please follow these basic guidelines:
> > - Include your full name with your message.
> > - Include the address of your website, if you have one.
> > - As threads develop, trim off excess portions of earlier
messages to keep
> them short.
> > - As the topic of a thread changes remember to change the subject
header.
> > - Good manners are required at all time. No personal attacks or
> "flames."
> > - Complete your Yahoo profile.
> > - Before posting a question, search the message archives and the
various
> resources on the homepage.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >
> >



Please visit the Group Homepage to check the Files, Bookmarks, Polls and
other resources as they are often being updated. The page is at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint

Please follow these basic guidelines:
- Include your full name with your message.
- Include the address of your website, if you have one.
- As threads develop, trim off excess portions of earlier messages to keep
them short.
- As the topic of a thread changes remember to change the subject header.
- Good manners are required at all time. No personal attacks or
"flames."
- Complete your Yahoo profile.
- Before posting a question, search the message archives and the various
resources on the homepage.




Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/