Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 00:13:37 -0500
Reply-To: Ken Hooper <bighouse@TYPE2.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <Vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Ken Hooper <bighouse@TYPE2.COM>
Subject: CD: failure to comprehend the point
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>(You've all seen Ken Hooper's recent rather nasty email,
>and I thought he was a friend.)
I don't know that I deserve all that, Ron. I'm sorry you thought that was
nasty, I thought it was perfectly civil. And I think I've proven I'm a
friend to this list several times over.
Let me try to explain one more time why some of us are concerned about this
CD business. After that I'll probably stop, because your legal exposure is
not my problem even if it's very real (and no, I haven't threatened anybody
with a lawsuit and neither has anybody else to my knowledge. The first
thing I said to Ron was, you're welcome to reprint my corpus if you want it
although it isn't very good).
You cannot wave your arm and declare that you possess copyright to the work
of others, merely because you say you do. In order to burn and sell this
CD, you have to possess copyright to the material. And this most recent
waffling about "the author owns the messages but the administrator owns the
compilation" is meaningless, you cannot publish the compilation without
publishing the messages so you still need explicit permission or at least
something that passes for a contract.
Some of us have been trying to explain this to Ron in pmail, in increasing
detail, and it's a little frustrating because he just does not seem to
care. I can quote three different permutations of "I don't care a bit!".
Well, I do, and I tried to keep this in pmail but it was no use.
If you do this thing, US copyright law provides for
--criminal penalties
--punitive damages of {CD sale total} X 8
And since there's cash payback involved, you can get a lawyer to take it on
contingency. Any of thousands of people whose messages are in the archive
can initiate this --IF-- you assert copyright to his work and publish it
for profit.
Do not take my word for this, somebody PLEASE check with competent counsel,
take up a collection if you have to. PLEASE.
If that (tort) were to happen I think we can assume that the archive would
come down, maybe the list would come down, and who is going to pay for all
this? If you proceed with this, you are endangering the Vanagon list as a
resource. Not improving it.
There are several people assuring themselves that since it's for a Good
Cause it's all okay--well, no, there aren't any exceptions for Good Causes.
It doesn't matter whether the profits are going to be spent on the list.
People are posting some unbelievable dreck (well, profit isn't *really*
profit and distribution isn't *really* distribution if we have love in our
hearts) and when the sh*t hits the fan I expect those people are always
very scarce.
Sorry, I'll plead guilty to being an assh*le if you want but this has got
to be dealt with and nobody is dealing with it.
--Ken
68 Westy, Admin --type2-- The Volkswagen Bus Mailing List
