Question the first: How does mail-archive.org act when a reply to one mail is
sent very much later, say one to five years? The message will be a reply to
the original message, with In-Reply-To headers and everything else set
correctly, and will be part of the mailing-list that mail-archive.org is
archiving.
Context: Under german law everybody mentioned in a public message has the
right to post his disagreeing view in the context of the original message.
That means that for example newspapers that print news about Person x, who
has done such and so, must print the statement of Person x regarding the same
matter ("Contrary to the claims of the paper, I haven't done..."), and do so
unedited. There are some limits to the size of that statement and so on, but
essentially everybody has the right to deny and correct, and the right hat
their correction is being printed unedited. The newspaper is free to add
their view of things after that unedited statement, for example that they
still uphold their original opinion based on the facts reported in the
original article.
This law also applies to mailing-lists, USENET news and so on. Some people on
debate asked how that law could be applied to mailing-lists, and I stated
that simply replying to the original message will probably satisfy the
requirements of that law. This is, because the reply message will be properly
linked into the context of the original message due to In-Reply-To and/or
References headers. Then I asked myself what an archive might do if there is
more than ~1 month or so between the original statement and the reply. Will
the archive still thread that message or will the thread be broken?
Even more context: [EMAIL PROTECTED] is a german language mailing-list
dealing with information society politics stuff which has a public archive on
http://www.fitug.de. Because in the past that archive has been the target of
history correctors that want things they said in the past unsaid or changed,
I started to forward my copy of debate to mail-archive.org to create a public
archive in another jurisdiction. My hope is that an archive being out of
german jurisdiction will discourage these people.
I chose mail-archive.org because it is a non-commercial community project that
seemed trustworthy and stable, and has a sensible spam policy (mail addresses
removed, but reply-by-mailclient instead of webform still possible). I also
chose mail-archive.org because of their one-word deletion policy.
While I am of the opinion that one should not be able to unsay things one said
in a public forum (that would be tampering with history), one should be able
to amend or correct that things in later messages, and it would be of much
value, if these corrections would be presented in proper context as an
addendum to the original thread.
Question the second: Is it possible for a user of mail-archive.org to
determine which particular subscriber of a mailing-list is forwarding the
list to mail-archive.org?
From a quick look at the HTML it seems that it isn't, which I think is good.
Also, what is the policy of mail-archive.org regarding inquiries in that
matter? That is, if asked, under what circumstances will mail-archive.org
produce original headers of the messages sent to it, and offer the name of
the submitter, that is, of the source that is feeding the archive?
Question the third: Assuming that there are two subscribers to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] that forward their messages to mail-archive.org, will
the archive detect the duplicate submissions and drop the duplicate copies?
This is ATM a hyothetical question. I don't want to burden the archive with
doubled traffic. It may be handy to know, though, in case the feed must be
handed over from one person to another, because if there is no duplicate
weedout, the handover is more complicated.
Many thanks,
Kristian
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