[LINK] A legal request to add a disclaimer to an old link posting

[Robin Whittle]

I think its fine to add a note to a message in the archives of mailing
lists, provided it is clear who wrote the text of the note and that its
addition was agreed to by the person responsible for the archives.  

Without such an arrangement, an unmoderated mailing list can become a
vehicle for putting material onto the Net and into search engines and
their caches, in a reasonably high-credibility setting, with the only
challenge available being someone writing to the list at a later date,
which would probably not be seen or known about by anyone looking at the
original message.  (This assumes the person who is arguably harmed,
misrepresented etc. is aware of the message.)

Removing or altering a message would be a different matter - but if, for
instance, it contained a bunch of credit card numbers and expiry dates,
or photos of people which should not be made public, or of
correspondence which seemed to be private, I would remove it first and
think about it later, rather than allow the list archives to be used for
a purpose different or contrary to the intention I had, and had
presumably clearly stated.

If I was running a mailing list with a public archive, I would have
clear moderation guidelines about what I would take off the archives. 
That way, it will be easy to take off spam, any material which threatens
privacy, contempt of court or is simply off-topic.   Since the
guidelines would be as a condition of contributing to the list in the
first place, it is not censorship.   I would leave some record of items
removed if I did that.  Simply adding an annotation to a message is fine
and I don't think it requires any prior agreement.


Theoretically perhaps such actions would make me more liable for the
contents of the archive, but I think that anyone who maintains a public
archive of a mailing list should be responsible for its contents.  While
it may not happen very often, the capacity of a mailing list, especially
an unmoderated list, to violate people's privacy, to misrepresent them,
or to interfere with court processes, is practically boundless.

I think that adding a note to this message is fine, provided that
readers of that message are also given a clear description of all the
circumstances surrounding it. 


 - Robin