Status of usenet archives under US copyright law (was: Re: Common Mob
catherine yronwode
> the Google Groups archive functions effectively as a library, or
> archive, in the strict sense used in applicable [copyright] Code.
Cite this Code, please. Where are archives of public discourse
mentioned in US copyright law?
Google offers to remove from their highly incomplete and selective
usenet archives all posts that infringe on copyright *web pages* or
*books* -- but Google has no mechanism in place for removal of usenet
posts other than at the *original* author's request. That is, you
cannot find in Google's copyright agent's form mail to you anything
that would allow you to delete *this post*, wherein i have cited only
a portion of your text and edited it, and have thus have created what
you called (incorrectly, as i understand copyright law) a "derivative
work".
Unlike siva, i am not interested in maintaining any archive except of
my own texts, actually -- but insofar as many of my texts consist of
public discourse, i believe that i have the same right to archive my
posts -- including the snippets of your posts to which i am replying
-- as, for instance, National Public Radio has the right to archive a
reporter's story in which one can distinctly hear the selectively
edited shouts and murmurs from a public political demonstration,
disaster scene, or coffeehouse conversation.
Having heard my own uncredited voice (surprisingly!) on several such
selectively edited news reports -- and having seen myself and my
friends appear in various documentary movies for which our permission
was not sought by the filmmakers (e.g. singing and dancing at a
Clifton Chenier concert at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
in 1976; shouting and then being tear-gassed by police during a
protest against the Viet Nam war in Berkeley in 1967), i think that
Google's editors and the many, many usenet archivists on the web have
made the assumption that what occurs in usenet is a kind of public
cultural demonstration in the same way that speech at a public
gathering is.
That's why Google does not seek permission to selectively archive
posts.
So far, no one has challenged in court the notion that usenet posts
are a form of public discourse. You are welcome to try it.
Also, please note that Google does not archive all posts, by any
means. It selectively edits the usenet traffic and archives only a
small portion of each day's posts into its database.
Specifically, according to arbitrary rules that it has never made
public, Google rejects the traffic in certain usenet newsgroups and if
you post to them, your messages will NOT appear in the Google usenet
archives.
One such newsgroup, should you wish to test this theory out, is
alt.autos.art-cars (discussion about painted, collaged, and sculpted
automobiles and announcements about the venues where they are to be
exhibited). I post there regularly. Google says the group does not
exist.
Some newsgroups in which i participate used to be archived by Deja,
but Google, for reasons the company has never explained, refused to
archive any traffic in these groups after they acquired the Deja
archive.
One such newsgroup, selectively rejected by Google, is alt.fan.ceiling
(general discussion, poetry, musings, friendship). You can do a Google
search on that newsgroup for the keyword "catherine" and find posts
from me (as Cyro...@aol.com) dating back to 1994 -- but all of my
recent posts to that newsgroup have been rejected for archiving by
Google unless i have simultaneously crossposted them into "accepted"
portions of the selective Google archive. Who knows why, but some
Google editor decided to do this. There is no recourse, because Google
is a private corporation, and it can do whatever it wants to when it
comes to archiving public discourse.
Likewise, Dejanews, the predecessor to Google, used to archive
messages in alt.fan.kali.astarte.inanna (a group devoted to homage of
the goddesses named and to general discussion of female-centered
spirituality) -- but Google refuses to archive posts in this
newsgroup. Search on it. The message "This group is no longer
archived" is all you will find, and the only recent posts you will see
are spammed cross-posts. Actual on-topic traffic in the newsgroup is
unavailable through Google's supposedly impartial and unedited archive
and must be collected by other archivists in other archives, despite
the fact that prolific usenet occultism authors like Susan Profit,
Larry MacMahan (a.k.a. Mockingbird, formerly also a regular in
alt.magick), and Tyagi Mordred Nagasiva (now nagasiva yronwode) were
posting there as early as 1994. Why doesn't Google archive posts in
alt.fan.kali.astarte.inanna? Again, i do not know, because this was a
private editorial decision made by the owners of Google, Inc.
Unless messages to these and thousands of other Google-rejected
newsgroups are cross-posted to the relatively few newsgroups that
Google is actively archiving, the messages are lost forever. Thus
Google is, quite obviously, NOT an impartial archive in the sense that
you represent it -- rather, it is a capriciously edited collection of
text traffic from usenet gathered at the whim of the owners of the
exceedingly commercial Google corporation.
Now, it would seem to me, that if Google is not exceptional as far as
archives go in that it is rejecting some posts and selecting others to
archive, then your belief that Google is somehow "[an] archive, in the
strict sense used in applicable Code" (whatever that Code is) falls
flat on its face.
You may wish at this point to make the subsidiary argument that Google
does not edit the line-content of the posts, merely accepting or
rejecting posts. But in addition to Google, there are thousands of
other selectively edited usenet archives at which posts appear without
any permission being sought and none granted -- and in which
line-content editing does occur.
Note that under US copyright law it does not matter whether these
archives are sponsored by commercial sites or not (repeat: the
commerciality of an unauthorized reprint is not an issue under
copyright law).
Here is a sampling of such archives, using my own posts as a test case:
At
http://www.edlis.org
there is a selectively edited archive and on the following URLs,
edited posts of mine are displayed:
http://edlis.org/twice/threads/american_pie.html
http://edlis.org/twice/threads/desolation_row_breakdown.html
http://edlis.org/twice/threads/booing_by_folkies.html
http://edlis.org/twice/threads/moonpie.html
Note that i although i have posted hundreds of messages about Bob
Dylan to rec.music.dylan, the source for this archive, only these four
posts of mine are collected at edlis.org.
I am not objecting to this archive in any way, merely pointing it out.
Again, at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/8563/
someone named Merkvrivs the Younger (completely unknown to me) has
archived a single post i made to usenet in 1995 at this URL:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/8563/library/faqs/sxmgkref.txt
Note that i am not objecting to this archive in any way, merely
pointing it out.
Again, at
http://www.urbanlegends.com
one of the hundred of posts i made to alt.folklore.urban in 1996 was
selectively archived without my permission at
http://www.urbanlegends.com/animals/stolen.pets/stolen_cats.html
Note that i am not objecting to this archive in any way, merely
pointing it out.
I could go on, citing the selective manner in which hundreds of my
usenet posts have been collected without my permission at dozens of
large and small commercial and non-commercial usenet archives, clipped
of their headings or otherwise altered, and uploaded to web pages --
but i have work to do now.
I think i have made my point, which is, in sum, that so far, and until
case law cites otherwise, usenet posts are considered public
discourse, not copyright texts. That means that until case law cites
otherwise, the presentation of usenet posts at a web site is treated
the same way that a documentary film or radio broadcast showing
visuals or presenting audio clips from public gatherings is treated:
No permission need be obtained, and selective editing may be made at
will by the documentarian, as long as libel, slander or defamation of
character are not involved (those are covered under tort law, not
under copyright law).
I hope you that accept this situation as reality, because that is what
it is -- the reality of usenet archiving in the world as it stands
today, February 12, 2003.
Tilting at windmills may be your idea of a swell way to waste your
life, but it is not mine.
cat yronwode
Old Coyote
<snip>
> Tilting at windmills may be your idea of a swell way to waste your
> life, but it is not mine.
>
> cat yronwode
Bully for you. The key issue here is the fact that the authors
do not solicit any payment for thier writing, and therefore
are not entering into any kind of agreement with people who consume
their product. The written material published on usenet just would not
come under the domain of copyright laws, since it has no potential value
for the authors. If it did they would write a book and make the rest of us
pay, right?
What a bunch of dorks really.
P.S. If I'm in your archives I can stay there till your hard disks fail
for all I care.
Blazin' Tommy D.
Old Coyote <OldC...@webmail.co.za> wrote in article
<bacaf0e0.03021...@posting.google.com>...
Blazin' Tommy D.
you're molding yourself right into their cruddy little mits
catherine yronwode <c...@luckymojo.com> wrote in article
<3E4A87A7...@luckymojo.com>...
The Natural Philosopher
>
<usual bollocks>
Is this argument STILL going on?
*sigh*
Blazin' Tommy D.
The Natural Philosopher <a@b.c> wrote in article <3E4C1787.3010004@b.c>...