Comments on: Preservation Entities Should Ignore Copyright

By: Matthew Helmke: What is more important to the human race? | Christian eBuddy Blog

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:00:40 +0000

[...] to Greg and his blog post for the story. Some of you have seen his post already, but I have several friends and readers who [...]

By: Phil

Phil — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:22:26 +0000

Greg: I think in the case of email delivery, fair use comes into play.

Fair use says that some uses are legal even though they’re not explicitly allowed. Backups of material you are already licensed to are covered by fair use, even if (for instance) a piece of software’s EULA says otherwise. I’m pretty sure email delivery falls under this as well.

Unfortunately it’s not very well spelled-out, but you should be aware of your rights under fair use as they supercede regular copyright restrictions in many cases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

By: Greg

Greg — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:44:47 +0000

Wolfger: you’re right in your thinking and that exposes one of the main flaws with copyright law in the “information age.” If you were following the law to the letter, then every “copy” of your email/blog post would be an infringement (both to harddisk, ram, cpu cache, network card cache, videocard memory, etc).

Luckily, people aren’t THAT dumb. They are close to that dumb, but not quit. The reason it doesn’t really come up is that if there is a case of infringement on a computer, the people sue for the unlawful replication that they can prove; like the song on your harddisk. I believe, but have no basis for, that if the suing entity then told the judge they wanted to multiply the damages by 6 because the infringer’s computer made a copy in memory 6 times because that is how many times they played it, the judge _probably_ wouldn’t let that fly.

Also, ISPs are considered a “safe harbor” under the DMCA; check out the Chilling Effects website FAQ: http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi

By: Matthew Helmke (dot) Net » What is more important to the human race?

Matthew Helmke (dot) Net » What is more important to the human race? — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:05:29 +0000

[...] to Greg and his blog post for the story. Some of you have seen his post already, but I have several friends and readers who [...]

By: Wolfger

Wolfger — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:39:10 +0000

So how exactly does copyright law apply to ISPs and such? When I sent an e-mail, it makes several jumps to several different servers before it reaches its destination. I can’t point to any particular piece of evidence, but I most certainly recall hearing that the e-mail is not deleted-without-a-trace after it departs one server for the next. Of course, the contents of my e-mail (and my blog post comments :) are copyrighted materials, and only the intended recipient has any right to it as I understand copyright law…