Re: Web Archive of Mailing List
Peter Krakau (ils@legalethics.com)
Mon, 10 Jun 1996 11:52:35 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 11:52:35 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <199606101552.LAA02109@foyer.homecom.com>
From: Peter Krakaur<ils@legalethics.com>
Subject: Re: Web Archive of Mailing List
At 9:31 PM 6/8/96, Samuel Lewis wrote:
* Lets face it, when you send a message to a mailing list, you are
* participating in a very public discussion. How can anyone expect that
* something sent to a mailing list and which is transmitted to 500+ people,
* all of whom simply need to send a message in order to subscribe to the list,
* is in any way private? This is about as public as you can get without
* standind on a park bench and screaming the thoughts to the rest of the world.
*
Public= Usenet. Depending on the list service= private. Certainly, list
service groups that are moderated and that are open by subscription only
are not "very public." Moreover, the park bench analogy has about as much
in commom with a list service discussion as a postcard has to e-mail.
* If I sent an e-mail to one person I know, or a few people at a time, the
* story might be different. I think a clear distinction can be made in the
* nature of the list. If you were sending to a list that you knew to be
* restricted, and you could reasonably know the people on the list (at least
* who was likely to be on the list, i.e., the accounting department in a
* corporate setting perhaps), there might be some expectation of privacy. But
* when you send a message to a list that is freely open to the public, then
* you have sent a message into a forum that is most certainly public. And
* public messages are not entitled to any sort of expectation of privacy if
* you freely put the message into the public forum.
*
I am not sure what "expectation of privacy" buzzwords have to do with it.
You are entitled to your opinion, but I think the owner of a particluar
list service discussion group is entitled to call it public, private, or
restrict the re-publication of messages however he or she wants. If you
want to set up your own list and take the time to screen messages and pay
for server space, then you can call it a "public" list. But in a case
where you do not manage the list, I think your claim that all messages are
public rings a bit hollow.
The best way to settle the issue, Joshua, is to decide what you want to do
and put it in the guidelines for the list.
As a closer, I question the propriety of taking archives of this list and
posting them without the approval of the list owner. It was not clear to
me from Mr. Lewis' message whether the establishment of an "unofficial"
archive would have the approval of this lists owner. At a minimum, it
appears to be bad netiquette.
Hope my responses dont appear too terse. I'm shoert on time (aren't we
all) but wanted to chime in on this rather important issue.
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Peter Krakaur Internet Legal Services ils@legalethics.com
<http://www.legalethics.com/> <http://www.legalethics.com/pa/main.html>
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