[PLUG] PLUG mailing list and copyright

[Navin Kabra]

> So, quoting for the purpose of establishing context, without keeping
> the license notice intact (something that is very common on mailing
> lists), comes under fair use? If yes, then I was mistaken about that
> point and I have no issues.

That is my understanding, but I am not a lawyer. Maybe someone who is
more knowledgeable can clarify?


>> 2. As far as I can tell, the PLUG website, or the PLUG mailing list
>> does not have any copyright notice which implies that everything
>> posted to the site is in public domain. In fact, the PLUG website says
>> everything is copyright PLUG.
>>
>
> Wrong. If there is no copyright notice it is not public domain. It
> means all rights are reserved. Public domain does not mean publicly
> available.


Sorry for the ambiguous phrasing of my sentence. What I meant was that
the PLUG website does not have a "public domain" copyright notice. So
on this point, we agree. i.e. just because this is on the PLUG site
and the PLUG mailing list does not mean that it is in the public
domain. (Your earlier mail implied that posting on this list puts the
content in the public domain. I am disagreeing with that.)


> Anyway, if the PLUG website says that everything is copyright PLUG,
> with no explicit license, then the CC license in the mails is invalid.
> It also conflicts with PLUGs mailing list policy. Which is why the
> license notice should not be present in the posts.

Actually, I looked more closely. PLUG website says that <most things>
are copyright respective authors: http://plug.org.in/copyrights.php.

The mailing list policy does not say anything about copyright

> As for the explicitly making it public domain, I think its a better
> option than reserving all rights. It makes the mailing list more
> useful. But thats just a personal opinion, the list admin may differ.

Again we are in agreement. Making everything public domain, or
everything CC-attrib would make the list more useful, and it wouldn't
require that license to be attached with each mail. But as you said,
that's a personal opinion, and list admin's opinions may differ.

But in the absence of any such policy from the list admin, having the
CC license in individual mails does serve a purpose.

navin.