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Subject: Re: Now it's clear that Ritter Rost's post is not a fake

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:23:17 04/10/00

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On April 10, 2000 at 02:48:55, Tom Kerrigan wrote:

>On April 09, 2000 at 22:46:29, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>possibly true.  But it still doesn't excuse someone violating the copyright
>>on a private email and posting it here without permission of the original
>>author...
>>
>>That is _really_ inexcusable...
>>
>>And should have been deleted _immediately_...  had the moderators been awake
>>at the switch..
>
>Of course, NOW it is obvious that the post should have been deleted immediately.
>
>Hindsight is always 20-20.

there is no "hindsight" here.  The email was _not_ posted here by the
author.  It is _always_ improper _and_ illegal to do so without the
author's permission.  Copyright law is pretty clear about who owns something
they wrote.  It would be much better to delete the post, and if the poster can
prove that he has permission to post private email (even if the email was sent
to a list of people, it is still private email without the author's permission
to post it) then it could be reposted.  Better to make an error on the
conservative side, IMHO, when it comes to obvious email.




>
>When you consider that Ritter Rost might have been a name that Ossi uses, or
>that Ritter Rost may have had explicit permission from Ossi to post the e-mail,
>well, that complicates the situation, doesn't it?
>

Not particularly.  Do you continue to let a newspaper story run, until the
facts are verified, or do you wait until the facts are verified before running
the story.  (IE National Inquirer vs NY Times).  We know who gets sued all the
time for 'printing without verification'.



>Personally, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt instead of
>immediately deleting everything that looks slightly suspicious to me.

I don't disagree.  But this wasn't slightly suspicious.  It was obviously
private email written by someone else.  No chance it was Ossi doing the posting
as he would have referred to "I wrote the following"...



>
>By the time I found out that the post was actually illegal, it had "naturally
>expired" so there really wasn't anything I could do about it.
>

what does "naturally expired" mean?  So far as I know nothing 'expires' here,
if you keep going back using 'next group of messages'...




>Because you are not on the CCC moderator mailing list, you have no idea what was
>going on "behind the scenes" so you aren't in a very good position to accuse us
>of being asleep at the switch. Personally, I think your comment is stupid and I
>resent it.


resent it all you want.  You made a poor decision.  Nothing much to argue
about.  Private email shouldn't be posted here.  It is against international
law to do so without permission.  It should have been deleted upon first sight.
It was not.  This was an error.  Resenting it won't repair the error.




>
>Here's a question: if you know exactly what the moderators are supposed to do,
>why don't we ever hear from you? By now you should have realized that we are not
>paid, full-time employees of CCC who spend all day examining posts.
>
>-Tom


Do I need to tell you, 12-15 times per minute, to inhale <wait> exhale <wait>
etc.?  Private email does _not_ belong here.  If you don't understand why, I'm
sorry.  Take a trip to Deja and read the usenet news policies that have been
around forever.   Just because this isn't usenet news doesn't mean that we can
do whatever we want.  There are still legal issues to contend with.  And
net ettiquette.  And responsibility to protect those that don't post here
themselves...

I would assume that anyone running as a moderator would _know_ that copyright
laws apply to email just as effectively as these laws apply to books.  It has
been discussed both here _and_ in r.g.c.c several times in the past.  I was a
moderator for the first 'shift' when we created CCC.  I have declined to run
each time since as I don't have the time.  If you don't have the time, then
why did you run???  It does carry a responsibility with the title...



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