Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!linac!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy Subject: Re: Is the Information the User's? (was _RFC on my "abuse"_) Message-ID: <1991Jun27.115918.730@mp.cs.niu.edu> Date: 27 Jun 91 11:59:18 GMT References: <1991Jun26.134621.15275@ms.uky.edu>> Organization: Northern Illinois University Lines: 30 In article pmoloney@unix1.tcd.ie (Paul Michael Moloney) writes: > >That last line is interesting. I don't know much about law, but I've heard >it claimed, at least in Ireland, that copyright exists on something you've >written the moment you write it. So keeping files of writing from a user is >in effect illegal. So should a sysadmin at least give a user whose account I guess I will have to report our janitorial staff for their illegal activities. They have been ERASING CLASSROOM BLACKBOARDS overnight thus DESTROYING SOMETHING WRITTEN and thereby KEEPING IT FROM THE WRITER. Seriously, your comments don't make sense. If there is a copyright the moment it is written, I cannot appropriate the text and use it as if it were mine. But that doesn't mean I have to give the writer access to it. Where it was written also has some significance. In the case of the computer, the creator of the files may have no ownership rights or other rights of access to the disk on which it was written. Common sense says that if you remove a user's access from the computer, you should make some provisions for him to access the data. But there is no requirement, and there are obvious cases when you would not do that (such as when the user fill your disk with a gigabyte of his data, consuming all available space). -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115 +1-815-753-6940