Pleading the 5th

[Jim Choate]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> The question is who establishes the rules that govern IP rights -- i.e.
> list owner policies.

Finaly, Declan finds it within his magnanimous soul to admit defeat.

There are three contributing factors to government of IP anywhere.

1.	Law, which states it's copyrighted by default as you create
	the work. Hence 'copyright'.

2.	The list owners, none of whom require any sort of IP transfer
	to participate. If there were such terms the transfer would be
	according to those terms and not 'economic need/desire' by
	some third party (eg somebody wanting to use the text
	commercialy). They would most likely need to get yet another
	IP transfer done with the list owner.

3.	The subscribers voluntary acceptance of the above two when they
	subscribe and continue to participate (even by lurking).

Consequence:

The archives would be on shaky ground if pushed legally to remove a given
piece of material. Anyone who were to say take the Cypherpunks archive and
publish it would legally be limited to the 'fair use' clauses currently in
application in their jurisdiction and anywhere their published work was
distributed (excluding used bookstores, gifts, etc. which could make
this last point really, really squishy).

Hence, I own my words - you own your words. If somebody wants to use 'em
outside of 'fair use' they gotta get your permission. As far as I'm
concerned as long as no money is being made off it I'm fine, if money is
to be had then 'NO'. I don't even want to talk about a 'cut'. 'NO'.

A very handy test of 'respect for private property'.

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