C70:info-cpm (05/16/82)
>From FJW@Mit-Mc Sun May 16 03:25:43 1982
1) Is it legal for someone on ARPANET to communicate
with someone not on ARPANET?
My understanding of the situation is this: as long as one of the
parties in a message exchange is an official user of the net (with all
that entails), they may communicate via the net. What this means is
that two end users who are not on the net themselves may not go
through the net to communicate "directly" to each other and thus
circumvent normally tariffed common carriers.
The analogy that may be drawn is that of voice communications using
either of the two major government networks, FTS and AUTOVON: off-net
to off-net calls are expressly forbidden and enforced - the
originating end must be on that service. However, conference calls
may be initiated by one of those on-net users and the conference may
contain any mix of on-net and/or off-net parties. By extension,
mailing lists sponsored by an official user of the ARPANET for
official reasons, may be considered as a non-real-time conference
call. INFO-CPM is such a list.
2) Is it legal for someone on ARPANET to act as a gateway
for sending files from ARPANET to other nets?
Since mail is but a special form of a file, the same analogy applies.
3) Is there ANYONE, in the entire land of ARPA, who is
willing to send some of the files from MIT-MC to
someone who will act as a distributor for non-ARPA
people?
There is nothing terribly special about these files - i.e., they have
all been culled from the various RCP/M systems around the country.
You can do the same by calling them direct - in particular, Keith
Petersen's system (313-759-6569, ring-back) - or take advantage of the
recent offer that Keith just redistributed which also includes several
files (mainly the games) that are not available on MC.
We are also looking for some Unix site on the net to volunteer
temporary space into which these files may be FTP'd from MC and put
onto tape, and thence made available to any off-net site that has the
space to act as distributor of the tape and/or the files themselves.
It is not reasonable to burden either this net or the other nets with
mail traffic of this volume - i.e., to the list in general. However,
I believe that we can try to arrange to send the new files by netmail
to the contact(s) who volunteer to use these files to keep their tape
derived collection current.
For the handful of you who have NorthStar Quad drives: send me a
plastic box of 12 disks with a SASE, and I will copy my collection of
about 3.5 Mbytes of SQueezed files culled from MC and copied to your
disks and send them back, as-is, no guarantees - no charge.
10560 Lakewood, El Paso, TX 79925.
4) Is the software at MIT-MC truly public-domain, or is
is it only public to those who have ARPA access?
All these files must be public domain or they are not acceptable.
However, the authors of certain programs have made them available with
certain retained rights, such as free distribution for private use,
not for sale, get revisions back to the author or some common
redistribution point, etc. Those files are so noted in their source,
or implicitly by a copyright notice.
All the files in the MC:CPM; directory have been made available purely
for the convenience of those who already have access to the net.
There is no obligation to make these files available to others, just
as you have no obligation to turn your system into an RCP/M just
because you have some public domain files. Likewise, MC has no
obligation to grant an account for the purposes of gaining access to
these files; they are available by other means as indicated above.
This is strictly a volunteer activity on the part of MC and the people
who help maintain the files. This does not mean we will not try to
help and cooperate within the means available as described above.
--Frank