Re: Copyright and license conditions of mailing list texts and the like

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 08:51:44PM +0200, Thomas Schwinge wrote:

> In general, not neccessarily Hurd-specific, is there consensus ``in
> the Net'' and amongst lawyers on what the copyright and licensing
> conditions are with respect to putting texts by individuals that
> appears on projects' mailing lists or other forums, for example, email
> or IRC messages, into official web pages or documentation?

I don't know of any consensus; but in general, people retain the
copyright on any mails they send. There is nothing indicating that they
somehow relinquish it when posting to our lists...

We *could* send an auto-reply message with a confirmation link the first
time someone post to the list, and ask them to click "I agree" (to
transferring copyright) -- but I don't think this is a good idea... We
can always ask for explicit permission when there is an interesting
posting.

As for IRC, I guess most conversations are simply not creative enough to
be copyrightable :-)

(Moral rights doubtless still apply though -- so think twice before
quoting out of context ;-) )

-antrik-