At 12:23 PM -0500 1/10/01, Declan McCullagh wrote:
It's amazing how Jim can be so earnest and so completely wrong. Actually, I've known him too long: It's not remarkable, but predictable.
(Hint: U.S. copyright law does not make mere possession or archiving an offense. Try distribution, performance, etc.)
On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 09:29:37AM -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
It has been proposed that forwarding a URL with a page attachment is copyright infringement. Taint so.
The situation is equivalent to a group of friends sitting around a table and only one paper among them. As they discuss a particular article they pass it among themselves. This is fair use and this is what forwarding a URL and content attachment to a mailing list is.
The copyright infringement issue arises when you SAVE that post. The real question of copyright infringement is the archivist who saves it but doesn't have permission to hold a copy of that material. It is the act of archiving digital data that is infringement and not sharing of access.
Strictly speaking the ONLY group who has a legal requirement to strip attachments is archive sites.
Declan, Jim Choate is actually correct in what he says above. The laws of physics, the history of the United States and Europe, even mathematics...all are as he describes them. In his world. In "Choate Prime," the parallel universe which he lives in, the Constitution is as he describes it, electromagnetics work as he describes it, prime numbers have the properties he has told us about, and copyright law works in the way he describes. As a reporter yourself, you should be appreciative of these reports from Choate Prime, that parallel world off-kilter from our own. --Klaus! von Future Prime -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns