[R] Wikibooks

[Clint Bowman]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2007, Peter Dalgaard wrote:

> Deepayan Sarkar wrote:
> > On 3/30/07, Sarah Goslee <sarah.goslee at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 3/30/07, Alberto Monteiro <albmont at centroin.com.br> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Deepayan Sarkar wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I was just looking at this page, and it makes me curious: what gives
> >>>> anyone the right to take someone else's mailing list post and include
> >>>> that in a Wiki?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> Thinks there were posted to public mailing lists are freely
> >>> copied and distributed. It's a scary thought; I may have posted
> >>> things in 10 or 12 years ago that might cause me problems today,
> >>> but I was pretty aware that I was posting to the whole world.
> >>>
> >
> > There's a difference between public archiving and copying.
> >
> >
> >> It's not that simple. Dealing with international contributors it's even worse.
> >> Under US law (the only one I'm familiar with), the author of a mailing list
> >> post or any other written work _automatically holds copyright_ to that
> >> post (although not to the ideas contained therein, but to that particular
> >> description of the ideas). (Of course, if the ideas are original to the author,
> >> it's good form to acknowledge that regardless of whether the exact words
> >> are used).
> >>
> >
> > I believe this is true for all countries that are signatory to the
> > Berne convention (which is pretty much all countries [1]). The US in
> > fact was one of the later ones to get into it, before which you had to
> > explicitly copyright things if you wanted copyright.
> >
> > -Deepayan
> >
> > [1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Berne_Convention.png
> >
> Yes. It's pretty obvious that by posting you agree to publication, and
> presumably also to archiving.  Think "Letters to the Editor". However,
> you do not agree to just any republication (in particular not to
> commercial usage -- say someone wants to publish the collected works of
> a particularly prolific correspondent, without  paying and obtaining
> consent).
>
> Interestingly, BYTE magazine back in the late 80's actually ran a Best
> of BIX column with postings from their bulletin board. I've always
> wondered how (and whether) they handled the copyright issues.
>
> There is a middle ground of "fair use" and the right to citation,
> though. I certainly don't expect to be cited by everyone using code
> snippets from one of my posts.
>
>     -pd
>

My wife has edited just such a collection (of Compuserve forum messages)
and is currently engaged in writing another.  And yes, obtaining and
keeping track of a hundred citations through the editing process is quite
the chore--but not so bad that she isn't willing to embark on another
book.  Needless to say, she cringes at the looseness of copyright tracking
that occurs on email lists and wikis.

Clint

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