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The protocols don’t talk about copyright explicitly, but they talk about replying and forwarding. Both of those behaviors are only legal if there is an implicit

The protocols don’t talk about copyright explicitly, but they talk about replying and forwarding. Both of those behaviors are only legal if there is an implicit grant of copyright to the recipient.

mirimir 8y ago
Again, IANAL. But copying in replies seems readily distinguishable from forwarding and publication. But anyway, sorry about taking this down the legality path. It is a cool service that you're providing. And I would never argue that you're legally responsible for what users do. I'm just concerned about the abuse potential. Maybe you could enable publication without explicit authorization only when all correspondents were registered users. That would encourage users to get their contacts to register, increasing your userbase.
yellowapple 8y ago
IANAL, but... Replying is always legal (copyright-wise, at least, notwithstanding other laws that might prohibit it for some other reason, e.g. CANSPAM), so long as your reply does not include my original message or a portion thereof (aside from parts that I didn't really author in a meaningful way, e.g. email headers). Replying with quotes, forwarding, or sending a paraphrased/summarized equivalent to my email may or may not be automatically legal depending on your jurisdiction's laws around fair use. Unless you know that it falls under fair use, it's almost certainly safer to treat it as illegal without prior authorization.
Spivak 8y ago
That line of logic doesn't work. A protocol is neither legal not illegal. It would be like saying that Swedish is illegal. The law largely doesn't care how you do something. It's also not a necessary condition because an internal company mail server wouldn't run into copyright issues since the company owns the copyright on all their employees' work. "Uploading a copyrighted work that I downloaded via GET with POST must be legal otherwise HTTP would be illegal."
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > A protocol is neither legal not illegal. My point is that when you send someone something you've written as an email, it constitutes an informal agreement (essentially a private contract) with the recipient. > It's also not a necessary condition because an internal company mail server wouldn't run into copyright issues since the company owns the copyright on all their employees' work. That's true, but anyone with a company email address is legally considered a representative of the company. (That's why you always need to deactivate people's email addresses when they leave.) So while the company (almost) always owns the copyright over work created, the employee is able to dual license that content by sending it via email. Anyway just to be clear we're not saying you should go ahead and dox all your friends. We're not ad supported, that doesn't benefit us at all. (If your first experience with the site is getting doxxed, you're probably not going to sign up, and almost certainly aren't going to start paying for the business product.)
  - Spivak 8y ago
    > it constitutes an informal agreement (essentially a private contract) with the recipient. Is there any precedent you're basing this opinion on? Because it's not like your company just gets to decide this. What are the terms of this supposed contract? If JK Rowling sent you the text of Harry Potter do you believe you have the right to distribute it through your site? Do you believe that there would be a meaningful difference between Netflix sending you the same bits over email vs HTTP?
    - Alex3917 8y ago
      > Is there any precedent you're basing this opinion on? There's no clear precedent. Clearly a judge isn't going to let us host a PDF of Harry Potter or whatever. If it ever came down to it I think there would just be a multi-pronged test, along the lines of the current test for fair use and securities law. In the case of Harry Potter it's an exogenous work that was created and copyrighted outside of an email client, it has significant economic value on its own, and there would be substantial economic harm done from us hosting it. In the case of normal email conversations most of those factors wouldn't apply, especially since in many cases seeing how people interact with one another is more valuable that the content of any individual message. Regardless, I paid my $6 to the library of congress to become a registered DMCA agent, so the copyright issue really doesn't apply unless we A) start ignoring DMCA takedown requests B) actively induce people to violate copyright.

The protocols don’t talk about copyright explicitly, but they talk about replying and forwarding. Both of those behaviors are only legal if there is an implicit grant of copyright to the recipient.

mirimir 8y ago

Again, IANAL. But copying in replies seems readily distinguishable from forwarding and publication. But anyway, sorry about taking this down the legality path. It is a cool service that you're providing. And I would never argue that you're legally responsible for what users do. I'm just concerned about the abuse potential. Maybe you could enable publication without explicit authorization only when all correspondents were registered users. That would encourage users to get their contacts to register, increasing your userbase.

yellowapple 8y ago

IANAL, but... Replying is always legal (copyright-wise, at least, notwithstanding other laws that might prohibit it for some other reason, e.g. CANSPAM), so long as your reply does not include my original message or a portion thereof (aside from parts that I didn't really author in a meaningful way, e.g. email headers). Replying with quotes, forwarding, or sending a paraphrased/summarized equivalent to my email may or may not be automatically legal depending on your jurisdiction's laws around fair use. Unless you know that it falls under fair use, it's almost certainly safer to treat it as illegal without prior authorization.

Spivak 8y ago

That line of logic doesn't work. A protocol is neither legal not illegal. It would be like saying that Swedish is illegal. The law largely doesn't care how you do something. It's also not a necessary condition because an internal company mail server wouldn't run into copyright issues since the company owns the copyright on all their employees' work. "Uploading a copyrighted work that I downloaded via GET with POST must be legal otherwise HTTP would be illegal."

Alex3917 8y ago
> A protocol is neither legal not illegal. My point is that when you send someone something you've written as an email, it constitutes an informal agreement (essentially a private contract) with the recipient. > It's also not a necessary condition because an internal company mail server wouldn't run into copyright issues since the company owns the copyright on all their employees' work. That's true, but anyone with a company email address is legally considered a representative of the company. (That's why you always need to deactivate people's email addresses when they leave.) So while the company (almost) always owns the copyright over work created, the employee is able to dual license that content by sending it via email. Anyway just to be clear we're not saying you should go ahead and dox all your friends. We're not ad supported, that doesn't benefit us at all. (If your first experience with the site is getting doxxed, you're probably not going to sign up, and almost certainly aren't going to start paying for the business product.)
- Spivak 8y ago
  > it constitutes an informal agreement (essentially a private contract) with the recipient. Is there any precedent you're basing this opinion on? Because it's not like your company just gets to decide this. What are the terms of this supposed contract? If JK Rowling sent you the text of Harry Potter do you believe you have the right to distribute it through your site? Do you believe that there would be a meaningful difference between Netflix sending you the same bits over email vs HTTP?
  - Alex3917 8y ago
    > Is there any precedent you're basing this opinion on? There's no clear precedent. Clearly a judge isn't going to let us host a PDF of Harry Potter or whatever. If it ever came down to it I think there would just be a multi-pronged test, along the lines of the current test for fair use and securities law. In the case of Harry Potter it's an exogenous work that was created and copyrighted outside of an email client, it has significant economic value on its own, and there would be substantial economic harm done from us hosting it. In the case of normal email conversations most of those factors wouldn't apply, especially since in many cases seeing how people interact with one another is more valuable that the content of any individual message. Regardless, I paid my $6 to the library of congress to become a registered DMCA agent, so the copyright issue really doesn't apply unless we A) start ignoring DMCA takedown requests B) actively induce people to violate copyright.