RE: [dvd-discuss] Diebold uses DMCA to suppress embarrassing memos

[Ole Craig <olc(at)cs.umass.edu>]

On 10/31/03 at 17:23, 'twas brillig and Ballowe, Charles scrobe:
 
> They're using the takedown provisions, not the anti-circumvention
> provisions.

	They may actually be within their rights to do so, although
IMO the takedown notice(s) should come from the individual posters to
the list, absent some document showing that they had agreed -- prior
to the dates of the referenced postings -- to automatically assign
their copyright on any work-related material to Diebold.

[...]
> Here's one to think about -- If I have a conversation with somebody, are
> their
> utterances copyright to them? Can I repeat everything they say to someone
> else?
> If I do so, am I in violation of anything (assuming no agreement exists
> limiting that)? If that conversation is in the form of e-mail rather than
> face
> to face, does that character change? What if I overhear people talking on a
> bus - can I repeat what they say? What if they're having a conversation on a
> public website (or website only secured by obscurity)?
> 
> If an e-mail conversation is legally different than a spoken conversation,
> why?
	
	A spoken conversation is not, by mere virtue of its
occurrence, "fixed" in a medium. The recounting of such by one of the
parties (or a third party overhearing) is a separate event. A
recording of the conversation is a concept separate from the
conversation itself and can be treated separately (and TTBOMK is --
e.g. what are the evidentiary rules in civil procedure regarding
recorded conversations when one or more parties to the conversation
were unaware of the recordation while the conversation proceeded? Who
has copyright on the recording of an interview -- the interviewer, the
interviewee, or both? (Or is it the IATSE member operating the
recording equipment?) Must the interviewer obtain a release of
copyright from the person interviewed in order to publish?)

	An email "conversation" (more properly correspondence) *is*
fixed in a medium, even if the nature of that medium might be debated
when you get to terms like "tangible". 

	ICQ or instant messaging protocols might be an interesting
convergence of these ideas (electronic written communication and the
impermanence of instant conversation) but email is not, IMO.


	IANAL, &etc.
		Ole
-- 
Ole Craig * UNIX, linux, SMTP-ninja; news, web; SGI martyr * CS Computing
Facility, UMass * <www.cs.umass.edu/~olc/pgppubkey.txt> for public key
[...] Oh, shed thy mercy and thy grace / On those who venture into space.
			(R. A. Heinlein)