[quoting Schrum, 19 Sep 95] I do, however, have to take exception to Maureen's comment: "However, any text on a listserv is fair game based upon the definition that a listserv or newsgroup/newsnet is a distributed communication. "
Are some discussions, conducted via listserv using private mail, not personal and private? Is there no place for individuals to have a substantive conversation, or perhaps even a sensitive conversation, without the worry that it is open for quoting? Or that someone may use those threads for his/her own research? Are we saying that all listservs that have open membership are completely open? If I join a list that is about a disease or disorder, can I not feel comfortable asking questions, etc., without fear of being quoted?
I'm glad Dr. Schrum summarized these questions here (and not just because it saves me from sending my first, hasty, ill-thought-out but wisely postponed response). It has always struck me as strange, the way net communications on the one hand emphasize total freedom of information flow, and on the other inspire the formation of groups (thinking here on a larger scale than private, person-to-person mail) for whom privacy is a much-desired, in some cases vital, thing.
Being a member of several communities sensitive to privacy issues (from queer studies to depression support groups), much of the "research" I've seen conducted has involved the very clunky presence of a (usually student, usually unfamiliar with net culture and etiquette) researcher who asks us to fill out surveys, without in any way integrating him/herself into the group. It's maddening--and scary--to think that if these people are so forward, that there are probably others who are lurking, gathering information without revealing themselves at all.
I don't want to sound like I'm huddling in the corner trying to hide from Dr. Big Brother. However, when I send out a usenet post, or mail to a listserv, I generally have a very limited audience in mind, an audience who will share common ideas, backgrounds, and assumptions with me. The thought that simply because I have distributed my words to a group, I have distributed them to the world at large, seems to violate the intent of specially-formed discussion groups.
A discussion was recently held in a queer-oriented list I participate in. Infoseek, which provides a net search that I have used many, many times, and have found nearly indispensable, had asked permission to link to archives of the list. In one sense, no problem, as far as I was concerned--I stand by my words, I write things I hope are mature and to the point (except when, as David pointed out, irony is intended--and I've come to believe that irony is to be avoided, since so many people on the net don't seem to understand they're reading a joke unless it is followed by :-). However, in another, more material sense, I'd be horrified to have my words on that list publicly available to all, since I am living in a state with no employment protection for its gay, lesbian, and bisexual citizens (or, if the list in question had been the depression support group, a state which officially offers protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act, while employers still don't understand the nature of mental illness and interpret it as laziness or incompetence).
It's a very thin line. I want to be able to speak freely to people; I do not want to be the subject of a study for which I was not able to give informed consent.
In other terms entirely, I still am not clear where words communicated over the net stand, as far as copyright law. I've understood US law, at least, to say that the minute I set words down, they are mine, with or without registration, with or without the little circled "c." This applies to paper communications--I've yet to hear of a court case or bill that would clarify its application to electronic communications. It will be interesting (with much vested interest!) to see how these laws are interpreted.
And while I am certainly trying to respond to the messages in a thoughtful manner (as thoughtful as the opening of school allows) I am not sure that I would want my responses to be quoted without substantial context included. I suppose we could each begin to preface each utterance with "permission to quote and cite this way" or "no permission to quote granted on the next three paragraphs" but to my mind, having a standard understanding that our community of learners agrees upon might be easier!
The question of context grows even larger when we think that most of what we write is response, and these huge threads go on and on, sometimes losing sight of the original post or letter. How to properly contextualize, say, my response to Dr. Schrum's response to two letters concerning her original paper? Not much of a problem here, since this has been, so far, a straightforward discussion. However, how complicated is our "standard understanding" allowed to be? I agree that it'd be a lot easier to assume/set down such an understanding, rather than have to grant permission for the snippets that we don't mind having quoted.
And the sooner the better, I think. Dr. Schrum's paper, to me, carries an urgency that convinces me that a "common law" of ethics, as it were, built up over time, could do damage to the groups that require some degree of privacy, and could annoy to death groups that don't require the same degree.