On 5/6/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Todd Allen wrote:
On 5/6/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Delirium wrote:
Excessive avoidance of activities that are not likely to result in legal troubles, but which some people irrationally fear might, is pretty much the definition of "chilling effects" style paranoia.
Seriously, do you think *mailing list archives*, and non-search-engine-indexed ones at that, are actually illegal? It's not even clear that such archives legally constitute publication, and certainly they are far less high profile than many other sources that have *not* been held legally accountable in any way, such as Google's own archives, or Wired's explicit publication.
The DMCA does not prohibit publication, it prohibits "trafficking". The MPAA vs Corely case held that publication on a website constitutes trafficking, and this was upheld at appeal. The Act specifies damages of $200-$2500 per "act of circumvention, device, product, component, offer, or performance of service". Presumably every time someone downloads the number from the mailing list archive, and every time we send it to someone by email, this constitues trafficking of such a device.
WikiEN-L has 878 members, so sending the key to the list would create a liability of between $175,600 and $2.2M, plus archive downloads and what not.
If "trafficking" were as simple as "making the number show up on someone's computer screen", they'd get a lot more mileage out of suing Google than us. And there -are- exceptions built into the law for academic use of the number. This isn't the same as the 2600 case, nor MPAA vs. Corel. Neither of those institutions are primarily academic and educational in nature, nor are they nonprofit. They've actually been pretty hesitant to sue academic users, because they -know- that's not one they'll probably win.
Delirium didn't ask "will they sue us?", he asked "is it illegal?" The answer is to the latter question is almost certainly yes. Which academic exception do you think is relevant exactly?
-- Tim Starling
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Exception 1, actually. It's short enough that I can post the full text here.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."