Matthew S. Hallacy writes: > And once you've released something into the public domain you can't > simply change your mind and retract it. Posting a message to a mailing list does not make it public domain. What makes you think that it does? > If you stand up in the middle of a group of people to make a > statement, and that meeting is being videotaped, do you think you > have any right to demand that anyone with a copy of that video tape > erase the parts in which you participated? A public performance is likely different than a written work. My guess is that the content would be copyrighted, while the performance would not be. I believe that the person who shot the video would hold the copyright on the video. Of course, that doesn't mean you can video tape a copyrighted movie and claim it as your own. > It's essentially the same thing. The person making the request in > this case has joined a public forum, that they were well aware is > archived, and > indexed by search engines. This person made a statement that [for > some reason] they wish to retract. I'm not aware of any legal precedent that gives implicit consent for a message to be used in this manner. Even if this were true, it is conceivable that the consent could be revoked later. This is different from a printed book. A book is copied once when it is printed. A web archive is copied everytime it is accessed. > Now, do you think that _any_ court would order a [large] group of > people to erase portions of a recording made in public on the whim of > a person who made a statement they wish to essentially erase? Again, this is a completely different issue. Having a copy of something and copying / publishing something are very different. You need to understand that distinction. > Point: You have to think before you speak, and be prepared to have it > follow you around for the rest of your life, maybe longer. That is irrelevant to this discussion. You need to answer the question: What right do you have to publish someone's copyrighted work (in this case, a message)? -- David Phillips <david at acz.org> http://david.acz.org/ _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list