RE: (Possibly OT) Can I quote you?
There were horror stories a few years ago when people discovered that a
whole host of newsgroups/mailing lists specializing in emotional support
(addictions, medical issues, personal problems, etc.) were archived and
available through one of the search engines.
People often ask "Can I quote you?" when "May I quote you?" is what they
really mean.
I have a somewhat keen interest in this topic as a researcher, but also because I've been stalked and, more recently, (and I don't consider this stalking just unusual) I discovered a stash of my "work" when Googling the archives of a political discussion list I belong to. I was looking for something I'd posted three yrs ago. I'd lost my orginal. Archives to the rescue. The archives happened to be down, but Google did turn up another source of my words: A net.artist in Denmark seems to think what I and some others write to this list is just fab (some people are easy to please!). HE uses them as fodder for his postmodern art -- a form of bricolage where text from many different contexts are put together to form a work of art based on one person's words, or many. Since then, I have been in touch with him off and on and recently received a cleverly titled post "Feet Jourin You" wherein I was notified that he's build a monument to moi. It consists of both my publicly archived posts and those sent to him privately.
Mmmmmmmmmmkay.
I wasn't especially embarrassed by my words; it was, rather, just spooky! It was _really_ disconcerting to learn that someone I didn't know, half a world away, was watching me and turning my words into his postmodern art. Alas, I hang out with a lot of artists, so I was aware of this form of artistic expression, and the political goals they believe that they are advancing.
Recommended reading:
Terry Carroll's Copyright FAQ at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/law/copyright/faq/part1/
Jill Till's Research ethics: internet-based research at
http://members.tripod.com/~ca916/index-4.html
There is some dispute here and, while Templetom's work is wonderful, he does make it clear that it is HIS interpretation. Many people view posting to discussion lists as akin to writing a letter to the editor and, correspondingly, they believe we should treat those posts as such. In that case, while we have a copyright on our posts and it is understood that the Ray's title as list-owner is an administrative one, not a legal one, there is an implied license that the list owner may do what he or she wishes with them. In this case, posts to this list take up shelf space at Google and ensure that searches at Google (and affiliates) will turn up raycomm.com, generating traffic for Raycomm. This also generates new traffic to the list, expanding the 'brain trust' everyone has built.
Quoting posts to the list fall under Fair Use in the U.S. Yet, this does not cover the questions of ethics--and law and ethics are not reducible to one another.
As I understand it, and IANAL, one can request that posts be removed from an archive.
An archiving feature which honors an X-No-Archive header in your posts to the list can also be built into the code that automagically generates the archive. The FoRK list has a public archive for reqular post to Fork -at- xent -dot- com, but another address for those who prefer not to have their posts archived, FoRK-noarchive -at- XeNT -dot- com
kelley
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References:
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