gistfile1.md

PS

While I was in the process of editing this article my good friend and co-founder Max Ogden told me he had just been asked to take down http://archive.couchdb.org, an IRC log and search utility he wrote for the IRC and Mailing List messages of the CouchDB project. [strike]It's unclear which esoteric Apache rule this tool violates, other than being useful and not being hosting at Apache, but[strike] he was told it's a "privacy violation" which is odd considering it only logs public IRC and Mailing List messages.

[Update] It has been clarified that the request to take down archive.couchdb.org was made by an ASF committer, possibly with the support of other #couchdb users, but is not a violation of ASF rules and the request was made on their own behalf and not the ASF. The only policy that has been metioned is the freenode guidlines which caution against logging but do not ban it outright.

"This isn't censorship. If I send you a private email and ask you not to publish it, that is not censorship."
But thats not the case here, because sending an email or private message would imply that the message is only intended to the explicitly stated recipients, imo irc messages sent to a public channel are under the "general publication", which would make them public domain:
"such a dissemination of the work of art itself among the public, as to justify the belief that it took place with the intention of rendering such work common property"

Of course there can be exceptions, if you copyright your speech before giving the public speech:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream#Copyright_dispute

"This isn't censorship, as I explained above."
It all depends on the legal status of the irc messages, and it seems that we are disagreeing here.

"On IRC, where any one of the hundreds of nicks could be a logging bot, you have to rely on network convention and trust. In our case, we have never advertised that we archive the logs and publish them, and so doing so at this point would break that bond of trust."
I'm not sure that many people expect that nobody will log the conversations, and you can't guarantee that either (and as I mentioned, I don't think that you have the legal ground to force that).

"We also have private mailing lists, opt-outs for Google's cache, opt-outs for the Internet Archive, and unlogged IRC channels."
Depending on what you mean by "private" and "unlogged" it can mean that those aren't intended to the public, so they are legaly/technically covered.

"I'm not, but it's my channel, so I'm going to do my best to enforce our policies."
Ok, I don't mind if you set up your policies(even if those couldn't be enforced), but from your first message, it seemed that you are saying that those are the policies imposed by Freenode.

"I never said that."
.
"and so it is a violation of Freenode's guidelines, and indeed common decency, to publish these logs. As the official Group Contact for the channel, it is my duty to uphold the channel to the network's policies. I am personally responsible for it."

I think that pretty much implies that those are policies(violations of the guidelines vs upholding the network's policies).

"I am following them, because I think they make a lot of sense. I never said I had to, against my better judgement."
I think that it is a nice guideline, I just wanted to emphasize that it is only a guideline.

"I am not responsible in the sense that Freenode are going to get angry with me. I am responsible in the sense that it is my channel, and I want to run it a certain way. I was stressing this part to distance the policy, and my actions, from the Apache Software Foundation."
Uhm, I think that it isn't yours, but the property of the group, you are just the representative of the group for contacting Freenode.
http://freenode.net/policy.shtml#channelownership
"Channels on freenode are owned and operated by the groups which register them. No minimum level of activity or moderation is expected or required of channel owners. The network exists to further on-topic uses, as explained in this policy, and channels or groups may be removed from the network for activity which is considered to be off-topic."
http://freenode.net/group_registration.shtml // See the description of the Primary Contacts.

Of course you could have your own personal channel, but that couldn't be called #couchdb imo:
http://freenode.net/policy.shtml#channelnaming

"Technicalities."
Yeah, that can be nitpicking if the subject is irrelevant to the discussion, I just wanted to make sure that we are on the same page about that.

"Can you clarify?"
Same as above:
http://freenode.net/group_registration.shtml // See the description of the Primary Contacts.
http://freenode.net/policy.shtml#channelnaming
So an Apache representative couldn't register the group by itself, but if the project elect it, or for example he/she also happens to be the lead for the project that would qualify.
But I'm just reading the website here, I don't have any first-hand experience with the Freenode group registration workflow.

Most of your comments seem to be nitpicking vocabulary, which doesn't seem important.

I can, however, say with certainty that this has nothing to do with copyright. I don't think we'd need to get those people to agree to the logs being published because they have copyright claims as to what was said. Though, I expect they might. I think we'd need to get those people to agree to the logs being published because that is the polite thing to do, given their original expectations, and the current circumstances. This isn't a legal issue, and it certainly isn't a technological issue. It's a social issue. And this is why any discussion about the law, or about the technical aspects, misses the point.

"privacy violation", "While the channel is public, it is not published. It's the difference between doing a podcast, and chatting with your friends at the pub. Both are fine, and both are essentially public, but they come with different assumptions about privacy." "it is my duty to uphold the channel channel to the network's policies"

we just discussed the potentially privacy violation and the policies of freenode and your duties as a group contact, so I think those are relevant/important.

I'm happy that we are clarified that it is only a social issue, hope that you guys manage to fix that.

We're working on it.