Flightlines

Geeeze, What a row this has been.

I have asked Bob plank to clarify what the legal risk to AIS might be from quoting from the iris@hort.net list in Flight Lines, but as I understand things (remembering of course that I am not a lawyer):

The charter of the AIS is education of the public on irises.
As such the Bulletin can be considered an educational publication.

Copyright law makes an exception for educational purposes: "the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

Additionally there has not been (and is unlikely to be) any damage to a quoted individual so there is no basis for a infringement claim. Also: "Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U. S. origin." None of the posts to the list have been registered.

I don't think that you even have to ask the permission of the author. Nor do I think you necessarily have to identify them. (In my readings of the Copyright act I don't see anything about this).

HOWEVER

Legal issues aside, there is another aspect of this issue: that being the good will of the people posting to the list. Please understand that the iris@hort.net list was established by me, has its policies set by me, and is not affiliated in any way with the AIS. The archives are a treasure trove of information about irises (although not all of it erudite...) that is just begging to be shared.

It seems to me we have several alternatives:

A: Don't quote iris talk messages in Flight Lines anymore. - That is not good, there is a lot of valuable information to pass along.

B: Ask members of iris@hort.net to add statements to allow or not allow excerpting their statements in Flight Lines - completely unworkable

C: Make membership in iris@hort.net contingent upon allowing posts to be excerpted for Flight Lines - I think that would have a very chilling effect upon the willingness of the membership to post.

D: Establish an AIS affiliated iris list, find someone to manage it, establish policies, enforce those policies, and make membership contingent upon allowing posts to be excerpted for Flight Lines - Remember as a private list, I can set whatever policies I want because the worst that can happen is someone leaves my list. If AIS runs it you may loose members. Also, see B above.

E: Ask the editor of Flight Lines to do the courteous thing and a least notify people that they are about to be quoted. Judging from the January Bulletin it would not be too burdensome to effect that process. The authors are already identified. I think a simple notification by email that their email has been added to a pool of items that might be included in Flight Lines would not be a difficult issue especially if sent at the time the particular posting is initially selected.

John | "There be dragons here"
| Annotation used by ancient cartographers
| to indicate the edge of the known world.

List owner iris@hort.net and iris-photos@yahoogroups.com
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