Pleading the 5th

[Jim Choate]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> Choate has given an implied consent for his posts to be redistributed
> in certain ways.

How? Saying it over and over like a Buddhist mantra won't make it so.

> Much as Usenet participants do.

A privately run mailing list is not equivalent to USENET where there is no
subcription or other 'access' process. The same can't be said about a
mailing list where one must 'subscribe' using a valid email address for
receipt. Access to USENET does not require any special action on the part 
of the reader or poster.

> He has probably not given consent for all of his posts to be combined and 
> sold by Wired as a book (of course this is just a hypothetical, nobody would
> buy it).

No, I haven't. In fact nobody on this list has, implied or otherwise.

> Choate, however, would have a very weak case if I was to reproduce
> one of his posts in a Wired article. Copyright law, as the lawyers
> can attest, includes many factors a court would weigh, and he'd
> almost certainly lose.

Actually under current law, if the article included more than about 200
lines of my posts then I'd have a very strong case.

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