[WikiEN-l] That random number

[Todd Allen]

On 5/6/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at 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.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
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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.

-- 
Freedom is the right to know that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.