i spent several years at an online news publication and we regularly received "requests" in this vain (including threats to sue if not complied with within x number of days) from people we had published interviews with. the standard reply was always "you agreed to the interview, therefor to its publication, so no, we won't delete it."
needless to say, nothing ever went beyond a couple of emails back and forth. (at most we would get a reply saying "yeah, but i don't want to be associated with that part of my life anymore" - which was always good for a laugh).
hans, your reply sounds balanced and spot-on to me.
besides the 'it's a public list and you agreed to it' argument, if you give in to this, you are creating a precedent and the public archive loses its value as a historical record.
he has not given a strong enough reason to do that.
he won't sue.
(and if he's based in the states, afaik, you can then sue him for threatening to sue and not following through :D )
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:49:57 +0200
From: "IEM - network operating center (IOhannes m zmoelnig)"
<noc@iem.at>
Subject: [PD] [ot] sueing the mailing list...
To: pd-list <pd-list@iem.at>
Message-ID: <4C725255.5010101@iem.at>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15
hi all,
sorry for posting an OT mail to the mainlist, but i really want to have
as many opinions as posible on this.
i (as list admin) have just received an email by somebody who wants
their mail to be removed from the archive:
<snip>
Subject: FORMAT NOTICE
August, 22 2010
I posted a message on the pd-announce list, being not aware that it was
a public list: http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-announce/XXXX
Someone replied to my message, also publicly, on the pd-list list:
http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/XXXXX
Today, I ask you to remove these two messages from your website,
because I don't want my name to appear publicly on the web.
If they are not removed within 15 days, I will do the necessary to sue you.
XXX XXXXX
</snip>
i must say, that i'm a bit perplex.
while in principal i'm not opposed to removing the post if they have any
problems with it,
however, i find the tone at least impertinent, and would prefer to not
give way to a threat to sue.
i have thus answered:
<answer>
hold on!
i understand that you probably don't want an unsubscribe request to be
available in a public archive.
however, all the pd-mailinglists have always made it clear, that
everything will be archived and made available to the public.
thus, by subscribing to one of those mailinglists, you have given your
agreement that all your postings to the list will be made available via
those archives.
furthermore, you are of course free to ask that your posting is removed
from the archives.
however, if somebody replied to your posting and has made this available
to the public, then i don't see what entitles you to request a removal.
it is their posting.
the pd-lists are an open forum.
they are no place to threaten people with sueing.
fgmadsr
IOhannes
</answer>
what do you think of all this?
fgmasdr
IOhannes
--
IEM - network operation center
mailto:noc@iem.at