Xref: utzoo soc.culture.indian:10969 news.groups:7387 news.misc:2604
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!watdragon!violet!ankgoel
From: ankgoel@violet.waterloo.edu (anil k goel)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,news.groups,news.misc
Subject: Re: Propreity (sp?) of making specific allegations on the net.
Message-ID: <11535@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 14 Feb 89 03:10:11 GMT
References: <11491@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <50486@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: ankgoel@violet.waterloo.edu (anil k goel)
Distribution: soc
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 52

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"it is unethical to publish/mail a copy of the articles written 
 by other people without obtaining a written permission from the
 authors.   Otherwise you may be guilty of copyright violations.  
 You can't even taperecord a telephone conversation without the knowledge
 of the other party."
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I disagree strongly with any opinion amounting to this because of the
following reasoning.

	There is a vast difference between a telephone conversation (or
        e-mail, or any other form of person to person communication) and
        posting on a public network. While you can claim a telephone
        conversation to be priviledged (and hence entitled to privacy),
        you can not do that when you post something on a network.

	As far as the copyright violations are concerned, I think they
   	come into picture only when somebody publishes an article from
        the net and assigns the source to be somebody other than the
        author.

        In any case, informing somebody of what others have said about
	them on a public platform does not amount to violation of
        the copyright acts. In the worst case, it can be called providing
        access to more people than the usual number and that is an implicit
	purpose when somebody posts on a public b'board.

Let us consider an anology to the whole scenerio to understand it better.
(similiar opinions have been expressed before on usenet before).

Posting on the net is similiar to writing a letter to the editor of a 
newspaper. Now, the priviledges of the author are limited to that the
editor can not ascribe the source to anybody else but the newspaper can
publish the letter in any form. Further, a reader of the newspaper can
propagate this letter to others (who normally do not read this paper)
by either lending their copy or by making photocopies or even by
transcripting the contents as long as they maintain that the letter
was written originally by such and such person.

I don't see anything wrong with the above situation (ethically, morally,
legally,...) and what I proposed is nothing more than this.

regards,

-anil

--
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"A reasonable man adapts himself to the world, an unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress is due to
the unreasonable man."         - Bernard Shaw.