Our Discussion makes news.

[Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law]

Although Oscar Wilde, I think, said that 'there is only one thing in the
world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about,'
if it were my words being quoted I would be very troubled to learn either
that there are reporters listening in on a group I thought was "for con
law professors," (impliedly only) or that a list member forwarded posts
from such a list without the authors' permission, or that a reporter or
anyone else quoted posts without the authors' permissions.

Quoting in this fashion is a breach of basic Internet etiquette and
arguably a violation of the author's copyright.

Of course it could be that the authors consented, but the article does not
make it clear whether consent was sought or given. ("I honor the listserv
custom that posts are not for public attribution, but, with thanks to all
of them, here are a few of their more imaginative scenarios.") If the
author thinks that consent to anonymous quotation is automatic, that
certainly does not express my understanding of either the relevant custom
or ground-rules.

(Good thing I keep my head down on this list; I'm noiser on some others.)

On Fri, 4 Aug 2000, John C. Eastman wrote:

> "Keith E. Whittington" wrote:
>
> > (I might note that the Rocky Mountain News recently published a rather amused
> > editorial about our discussion on this list.)
>
> Complete with block quotations, I might add.  The URL is
> http://www.insidedenver.com/seebach/0730seeb.shtml, in case anyone is
> interested.  Is anyone troubled by seeing their posts to this list in
> the papers?  Should we be? --John Eastman
>
>

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