Some good points here Lin. You might also want to point out to them the following. If I were to press a CD of the NZNOG archives and have it published in order to sell, then the National Library would be required to hold a copy and make it availible to the public. Infact they hold a copy of ANYTHING 'published' in NZ. Thats the law and thats their job. You don't see them getting worried about stuff like the privacy act. (they have bigger problems most of the time) Dean On Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 10:25:33AM +1200, Lin Nah wrote:
I have just emailed the following to Paul Brislen and Mike Cronin
Dear Paul Brislen and Mike Cronin
I have read the article in IDG online with the headline "Newsgroups could be breaching Privacy Act". http://www.idg.net.nz/webhome.nsf/UNID/29322B8165E1E256CC256A94001886CB!open...
I strongly disagree with the stance or opinion stated there.
1. Newsgroups and mailing lists are NOT the same thing This sentence "Cronin suggests list administrators make sure they tell newsgroup members when they sign up that their postings will be archived." appears to indicate that Mr Cronin sees them as the same thing
A Mailing list is like a distribution list. People subscribe to it by adding their email email address to it. Netiquette is quite clear that no one else by the person whose email address it is can subscribe to the list. Usually when they do this an email will be returned telling them they are successfully subscribed. Some even go through the extra step of not adding you on till you acknowledge the reply. It is possible to find out who is subscribed to a mailing list. Mailing list emails should be automatically archived (if it is run by a good list software). A mailing list may have an administrator but he is not necessarily the owner of the list.
A Newsgroup is a discussion forum. With public newsgroups (and there are thousands of them) no one actually knows who is reading it (unless it is a private newsgroup hosted on one server). Messages are distributed amongst servers. Anyone can subscribe to them and there's definitely more readers than there are posters. Anyone can potentially set up an archive of a newsgroup. It isn't an automatic function. There are archives accessible by web. IT used to be on dejanews and is now on Google. There is no control over this. No one owns the newsgroup.
I would be more than happy to meet with either or both of you to explain newsgroups and mailinglists.
2. Breach of Privacy Act "Newsgroups that archive their postings on a website may be in breach of the Privacy Act and could be required to purge their archives or take them offline, says an Auckland lawyer. Principle nine of the act requires that "an agency that holds personal information shall not keep that information for longer than is required for the purposes for which the information may lawfully be used". "I think an archive of a newsgroup could well be covered under this principle," says Russell McVeagh partner Mike Cronin."
I do not agree with this. If you post to a newsgroup you know you are posting to a public forum.
Unless the mailing list is a private list (eg of say a small group of friends), you know there will be many people reading it.
I do not see why such archives should be purged since the information is made public. Furthermore if you think newsgroups should purge their archives then you will also believe that newspapers and libraries should all purge their archives too.
Anything printed in a newspaper or periodical is archivable, either in print or by microfiche or CD-ROM. If the newspaper published something wrong, all they do is print an apology or retraction or correction in a later edition. As far as I know, no newspaper has every been asked to go remove the article from all their archives or all known archives of the newspaper.
In the case of Mr Angelo's post to nznog, he did post it and now regrets it. It has been suggested he could post an apology to the group and that can be read with the archive. What is better is we could even insert a link from the UCE he posted to the apology so readers of the UCE could read the apology too if they so wish. I am sure no newspaper archive can do this even when they made a mistake.
Apart from the mailing list's official archive, there is no knowing who else is archiving all mails or newsgroup articles. For example I could (and no I don't) have a 5 year archive of the ISOCNZ mailing list in my computer.
Most newsgroup archives are NOT in New Zealand. So how would you make the archivist purge their archive? Secondly it wouldn't surprise me if someone out there is pressing CDs of archives (whether newsgroup or mailing list) to sell. How would you stop this, especially if it isn't in NZ?
Someone sending a CV in for a job is sending it to one person. S/he didn't post it publicly. It is like sending a private email. Mailing to a mailing list OR posting an article in a newsgroup is NOT private communcation.
Sincerely Lin Nah
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