🚀 go-pugleaf

purdon@athena.mit.edu (James R. Purdon III) writes:
> Well, I still think its wrong to routinely log and review the contents of
> terminal sessions and email without prior suspicion and without informing
> users that a policy of routine logging and review is in effect.

I still think it's wrong even if you do inform the users that you do it, if
there is no reason for prior suspicion.

As to the question of whether denying someone access to his files by
suspending his ID is a breach of copyright:  it isn't.

Copyright is the right to copy something.  No more and no less.  The user
does indeed own the copyright on his files; but that does not mean that the
system owner is in any way obliged to give the user access to copies of the
file which he (the user) left on the system and which he (the user) no longer
has access to.

For example, copyright does not grant an author the right to enter my house
in order to gain access to copies of his books which I may have been given;
not even if the author himself gave them to me.

At most, the suspended user could probably insist that all copies of his
files be deleted from the system.

For this reason, at college I always kept my own backups of everything I kept
on the University's computer system.  I heard rumours of a clause stating
that stuff I put on the system became the property (and copyright) of the
University, but I hadn't signed any contract to that effect so I was
confident it wouldn't stand up in court.


mathew
[ Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. ]