Re: Re: [ga] Proposal for mailing list policy

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald@Alvestrand.no>]

At 02:04 14.01.00 -0500, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:


>Take me as an example.  I would probably read the filtered list routinely.
>But if someone tells me that there is censorship going on, I would look at
>the archive of the unfiltered list.  It is unreasonable to expect me to
>archive all that traffic just in case of need.  It is also not productive
>to make me rely on a private archive that might be incomplete or
>manipulated.  I need the official one to make a judgment.

this argument makes sense to me.

>   And I need it
>online before the people who control it edit it to remove what I want to
>see (if they are dumb enough to do political censorship, they would be
>capable of editing the master list if I had to give them notice of my
>interest by asking to see it;

this doesn't - if they were dumb enough to try to manipulate the evidence, 
they would definitely manipulate the archive before it was made public too.

>  or they might not give it to me.  And why
>should I have to give them a reason for why I want to see it?  What
>point does that serve?).

That the database owner cannot be accused of "publishing" the data in the 
archive.

>  Thus, a secret archived list is not a good
>idea.  Anyway, what exactly is the objection to having the list archived
>and public?  What was the Canadians' mysterious reason?  What harm can it
>do?

The legal reference is French, not Canadian: Database owners may be liable 
for injurious material contained in their publicly visible databases, even 
if it is put in there by someone else.
See below for the Canadian reference.


> > Secondly, according to my information, after having gone through an
> > experience similar to the one we are witnessing now, the Canadian
> > Government took a different approach about the filing system ;>).
> >
> >
>
>I am afraid the reference here is lost on me.

One nice link is
http://www.ipc.on.ca/web_site.eng/locating/orders-m/M-618.htm and
http://www.ipc.on.ca/web_site.eng/locating/orders-m/m-947.htm, since this 
appears to be a set of rulings from the Information and Privacy 
Commissioner of Ontario.
(the appellant in the second case is not identified)

Briefly, Baptista and another person bombarded Canadian government agencies 
with requests for information in such numbers that the requests, if 
satisfied, would have caused all government officials to be busy preparing 
information for him. The rules were changed afterwards because of this.

I particularly like the quote from Baptista in M-618:

"My interest in freedom of information legislation has a singular intent. I 
have made it very clear to the Commission and any other party that my 
purpose is the creation of an administrative burden for the Commission and 
related government agencies"

> >
> > First of all, everybody is welcome to keep track of the traffic and to
> > build his/her own archive. BTW, do we have volounteers?
> > Secondly, the question is not "to archive" or "not to archive": of
> > course the records will be kept by DNSO Listadmin (at least to have
> > legal evidence in the not unlikely case of court trial). The question is
> >  whether to provide real-time, on-line access to the integral set of
> > messages (BTW, becoming liable in some jurisdictions of the material
> > contained therein).
>
>This is a red herring.  Store the materials here in the US and there will
>be no liability unless notified about conpryight issues, in which case
>there is no liability if you remove the stuff at once.  Same with libel.

So it's OK to have an edited archive if the editing happens only when 
notified of illegal material?
This may work.
OTOH, we might see this process abused by the person who just told me:

>You are forbidden from using or recording  my name in any way in support
>of this travesty - period.  If you want an election set one up but your
>attempts at an election travesty is one parlor game i will not play
>at.  Period.  Any attempts to use my name in conjunction with your
>IBM sponsored bullshit will be considered a direct libel and slander
>against me by yourself and the NC.

since it amounts to either a judgment function by the archiver (making her 
responsible) or a remove-on-demand archive. Does that work?

                     Harald

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, EDB Maxware, Norway
Harald.Alvestrand@edb.maxware.no