|
Grex > Coop11 > #174: A motion to protect Grex from copyright infringement suits. | |
|
| Author |
Message |
| 4 new of 78 responses total. |
srw
|
|
response 75 of 78:
| 
Jul 17 05:30 UTC 2000 |
Glad to see that DanR picked up on my position that Grex obtains a
license to publish the text by the act of posting it. I see no
particular reason to make this license more explicit, as it is fairly
obvious, since it is the only point of posting, but if a lawyer
representing Grex felt it would be in our interest to make this license
more explicit, I would not argue on that point.
As before, I think that Grex should not always exercise that license.
Although we have the legal right to continue publishing the text in this
case, we shouldn't always exercise it. I believe that this policy would
make Grex better serve its users. Thuis is why I don't think that
copyright law forces any policy on us in this case.
The case of when the author wants us to retract it from view is one case
that I would like to see our policy be to honor that request. That's why
I voted in the minority. THere are other cases, too. Consider that A
utters something to B in confidence, and B then posts it. If A complains
to Grex and can convince us that what is posted was A's text in the
first place, so that A is the author, not B. Thus B granted us a license
it didn't have the right to grant. I can see situations like this in
which Grex might want to have the flexibility to remove the post. It's
all gray area, admittedly.
|
janc
|
|
response 76 of 78:
|
Jul 19 15:27 UTC 2000 |
Nobody is questioning that any posting text here is implicitly licensing
us to display it. That's obvious.
The question is, what are the terms of that implicit license? What
rights exactly has the poster yielded to Grex?
I'm no student of the law, but I think there is only one sensible way
the law can work here: an implicit license has to be assumed to give
Grex only the most minimal and obvious set of rights. Claiming any
rights beyond that would be like claiming you granted me the right to
move into your house by yelling "hello" to me from your porch as I
walked by.
Right now, there is nothing obvious about Grex's claim that you can't
revoke postings. Quite the contrary. Picospan offers a "expurgate" and
"scribble" command, and Backtalk puts an "erase" button next to each of
your responses. A person might very reasonably assume that he has the
right to remove responses. Even in the absense of those, it might be a
reasonable assumption. The fact that so many other sites do allow
deletion is enough to prove that assumption reasonable.
I think if a statement appeared regularly and prominently that said
something like "Text posted here can never be completely erased" then
that would be enough to make it clear to people that this is the case,
and I'd think that would be enough to cover us on this one point even
without writing out a complete formal license.
What it would *not* do would be to change things for people who posted
in the past. The implicit or explicit license that applies is clearly
the one "in force" at the time the message was posted. That being the
case, I think we have no legal leg to stand on in refusing to erase
anything currently on Grex, and writing new licenses or warning messages
won't change that.
But the legal aspects aren't the main point for me. Yes, the law
matters, but it is important to think about what it is we *want* to do.
I think the sensible default for a free speech system is to allow
authors to retain as many rights to and as much control over their own
words as we can reasonably allow. We shouldn't limit people without a
compelling reason for doing so. I fail to see any such compelling
reason here.
|
srw
|
|
response 77 of 78:
|
Jul 21 03:12 UTC 2000 |
Well, neither do I, Jan, so we completely agree as to strategy, with
each other at least, if not with the majority of members.
All I seem to disagree with you is whether we're legally obligated to
change our policy.
|
cmcgee
|
|
response 78 of 78:
|
Jul 21 15:35 UTC 2000 |
Well, I voted in the minority too, and I really like Jan's explication in 76:
"I think the sensible default for a free speech system is to allow
authors to retain as many rights to and as much control over their own
words as we can reasonably allow. We shouldn't limit people without a
compelling reason for doing so. I fail to see any such compelling
reason here."
I agree that if we aren't going to allow people to "remove" their words,
we need to be much more explicit that we do not ALLOW people to remove,
scribble, expurgate or otherwise permanently conceal what they've written.
Not that we can't, but that we won't.
|