[Air-l] re:Response to Thomas Koenig - Part I

Charles Ess cmess at drury.edu
Tue May 25 08:18:14 PDT 2004


> From: ET <et at tarik.com.au>
> Reply-To: air-l at aoir.org
> Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 10:01:10 +0930
> To: air-l at aoir.org
> Subject: [Air-l] re:Response to Thomas Koenig - Part I
> 
> Charles, you wrote...
> "2. The central question then becomes - what counts as a recording or
> registration of publicly observable behavior?
> Part of the difficulty here is making an analogy between offline recordings
> (via cameras, video and audio tape recorders, etc.) and what is now a
> publicly available archive of USENET postings.
> It seems to me that there is a strong analogy. Recordings/registrations give
> us an enduring and publicly accessible source of information for subsequent
> analysis - and certainly the publicly accessible archive of USENET postings
> does the same thing."
> 
> Now I am confused.
> 
> I see the publicly available archive of USENET and the information available
> on websites
> as a library.
> One doesnt ask permission from every source of information used in a library
> when conducting 
> a study, does one?

As Dan Burk's post made clear, I thought - the situation depends on the
"fair use" or equivalent guidelines for the use of copyrighted material.  I
don't know what the situation in Australia is - but then we have the further
interesting question of what to do with a resource that is almost by
definition international. The Berne convention should apply, as Dan makes
clear - but whose "local" rules for fair use (if any) apply?
 
cheers,
charles ess





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