Site made of mailing list posts.

Forum Moderators: not2easy

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Site made of mailing list posts.

Is it okay for them to do this?

NickCoons

4:13 pm on Jul 29, 2006 (gmt 0)

I found a site recently that was made primarily of mailing list posts. The home page of the site was categorized into sections such as "How to make a widget", "How to serve a widget", etc. When clicking on those links, it took you to another page on the site that had an entire thread copied (quotes, email headers, everything) with a conversation that accurately detailed the topic.

It seemed to be a very good resource. But I'm wondering whether or not this is okay for them to do from a copyright standpoint. If they received permission from the mailing list participants it would seem to not be a problem. But if they didn't, is it still okay? Are mailing list posts considered public or fair-use when republishing, or is owner permission still required?

Now that I think about it, I've seen posts "archived" in this fashion all over the place, just not in the organized way that this site had them.

shigamoto

6:04 am on Aug 3, 2006 (gmt 0)

Interesting, are the posts from UseNet or something? What I have heard about posting and mailing lists is the following:

A mailing list/UseNet is not public domain if they author haven't stated otherwise. A good post on this is:
[webmasterworld.com...]

AjiNIMC

7:03 pm on Aug 6, 2006 (gmt 0)

If the policies are well defined it is not a problem.

NickCoons

3:09 pm on Aug 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

Interesting, are the posts from UseNet or something?

I can't tell by looking at the posts if they are from a newsgroup or from a discussion mailing list, but such a mailing list would be functionally similar to a newsgroup that I'm not sure if that would be an important distinction.

If the policies are well defined it is not a problem.

Where would these policies be defined? By the poster of the message, or the charter of newsgroup/mailing list?