From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
1. Expect more and more of these sorts of copyright "cease and desist" (or, as I like to say, "decease and cyst") orders, as newspapers and magazines use search engines to find their stuff. Expect some "automated searches" to be done routinely, even offered as services by third parties. ("Find infringing copies...make $1000 a week in your spare time.")
4. Suppose the HKS archives were actually offshore, in the Cayman Islands or in some place that doesn't recognize copyright law in the same way most Western or Berne Convention countries do?
In addition, what if the material is edited down to try to conform to fair use, as I do? First, you're still going to find it using the search engines - and will have to filter it out. Second, the hoster of the data, if locatable, will have to decide whether to respond to a legal threat and delete something that may be within such guidelines. Third, such guidelines may vary from country to country.
5. Suppose access to such archives is done via Web remailers, and the location is not easily determinable? (To be sure, lots of hits means traffic analysis will reveal the location....the same general problem with "reply-blocks," of course.)
To what degree could a remailer sense that its remailings are getting too predictable (susceptible to traffic analysis)? If it had some means of doing so (without keeping enough information to make subpoenaing it a profitable proposition), then it could do something like the random looping-back remailer chains, on an automatic basis to the degree needed to offset analysis. -Allen