[Air-L] a question about privacy protection and copyright in Internet research

[Kevin Guidry]

A few quick points:

1. If the quotes are already publicly available and thus presumably
indexed by search engines, does it do much good to obfuscate the
author's name or handle?  Of course, if the quotes are trivial or
common it would be hard to trace them back to the correct author (but
if they're trivial or common do they need to be included in a
publication?).  But what are the ethics involved here?  If subjects
wrongly believe themselves to be publishing in private or semi-private
forums should we continue to honor that belief ("play along" with
them?) in some way?  Surely others have put significant thought into
this and can provide us some guidance!

2. I'm very surprised that no one has raised "fair use" or "fair
dealing" in the brief discussion of copyright.  I don't know about
copyright and intellectual property in Finland but in many countries
there are research and scholarship exceptions in copyright law
allowing us to publish copyrighted material without permission from
the copyright holder.  When appropriate, we shouldn't be shy about
taking advantage of those rights.  Copyright should not be an excuse
to prematurely or unnecessarily censor or restrict ethical, valuable
research.  By not understanding or taking advantage of copyright law
there seems to be a danger that we unnecessarily self-censor our work,
possibly more harshly than even the most aggressive copyright holders.


Kevin