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

[Robin Whittle]

Robert Hazeltine wrote of how many websites and mailing list archives
contain out-of-date material and so it would be silly to be attaching
notes to everything which was out of date.

I have not looked closely at what the aggrieved party is concerned about
here.  I was assuming that they were disputing the correctness of the
message at the time, rather than just saying that its out of date.   Of
course mailing list archives are out of date.  If that's their only
complaint then I think its unreasonable to hassle the archive owner to
add a note, since the archive owner never pretends that everything in
the archive is true, or was true.

If they want to comment on a previous message, such as it being no
longer true, then they can write to the list.   Since the list archives
are no longer visible to search engines (though I don't see how this can
be reliably achieved) then their message will not be found in searches,
and of course it will not be linked to from the original message, but
that's the nature of archives.

I think that if a grave allegation or misrepresentation is made in a
mailing list, with searchable and public archives, the accused party
arguably has a right of making some reply or annotation which will be
found by persons who find the original message.  Maintaining a public
web server with text with grave accusations, or with privacy invasive
material, or which is in contempt of court etc. is a serious matter and
I think there are arguments for the aggrieved party having some ability
to add a note challenging the accusations or misrepresentation or having
privacy invasive material removed.  

Perhaps these people don't have the same understanding as we do about
how many archives of mailing lists there are and how much of it is water
under the bridge, with virtually no-one assuming that messages were
necessarily true at the time or and no-one assuming that they are
relevant to the situation years after they were written.

 
 - Robin