On Mon, 19 Aug 2002, JC Dill wrote:
>
> One could argue that subscribing and mirroring a mailing list on
> the Internet is akin to the paper book parallel of buying a
> single copy of a book then putting it in a lending library. In
> both cases, the "owner" provided the item to subsequently be
> shared (via the mailing list subscription or the book sale).
> Both purposes serve to make the information available to a wider
> group of people. Lending libraries are permitted by copyright
> law, even though many book publishers were against the idea when
> libraries first became popular. Why should mailing list mirrors
> and archives be treated differently?
>
> Note: I'm NOT saying they should, or they shouldn't, just that
> we should consider why either of these is a possible
> interpretation of present copyright law. I can't find anything
> specific in Title 17 regarding the establishment of lending
> libraries and how they were permitted under copyright law. :-(
>
> <http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/index.html> For those who
> want to read it raw.
It happens that I was a copyright examiner once upon a
time. The law has changed -- twice, I think -- since then, and I've
never been a lawyer; but the law even in my time was sixty pages of
fine print, *plus* all the case law (what you cite is just the
statute, I believe), plus regulations, plus legislative history,
etc., etc., ad nauseam.
There are whole law firms specializing in copyright law,
plus the political ferment over the latest abomination. It would be
prudent to assume as little as possible about what any particular
court might or might not do in any particular case.
And my guess, which is no better than yours, is that the
intense disagreement between the big copyright holders (who have
money) and their opposition on the Net (which may have votes) could
lead almost anywhere. Mark Twain said it best : no man's life or
property is safe while the Congress is in session.
--
Beartooth <karhunhammas (at) lserv.com>, Linuxer's apprentice w/RH 7.2;
pine 4.43 on ISP's SunOS 5.8; Opera 6.02, Galeon 1.2.5, & Mozilla 1.0
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