vnend@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (D. W. James) (03/16/89)
Some questions:
1) The internet has a certain prohibition against commercial use of the
network. Would traffic in rec.humor.funny, some of which was both
coming from and going to a purely pay-by-the-minute-reading site
(Compuserve, GEnie, etc.) constitute commercial use of the network?
2) I've seen one person claiming that Brad built rec.humor.funny
practically with his bare hands. I've seen someone else saying
that he was elected. Which was it?
3) With regards to the commercial systems having access to USENET in general,
don't they claim some copyright to their stuff? If so, will they be
claiming some kind of copyright of the USENET traffic? And, once again,
how does their charging affect the internet?
***************
The question of Brad recieving money for his *time* spent working
on the other system is one thing. I think that his recieving money for
the time *others* spend reading it is another. But I can't decide if I
am for or against the idea. *Hopefully* it will mean we get more jokes,
in which case the result from our point of view is just that another
site has been added.
The question of whether Brad is/was intending to use the
compilation copyright for this purpose all along is yet another,
but I really don't see how we can answer it. Brad's answer would
be the same if he is clean as the driven snow or not would be the
same. The question of whether the compilation copyright should
belong to Brad or, say, USENIX or Stargate or UUNET (as nonprofit
organizations associated with the net) is something I don't think
anyone has discussed.
The question of gateways between USENET and the commercial
'networks' boils down to a very simple question: *Are* they "just
another site?" How does Compuserve on the net differ from, say,
Apple? Both are businesses. Both are computer oriented. True,
Compuserve is selling computer time/information, while Apple produces
hardware (mostly.) One wants to charge people to access the net,
the other pays people who have access to USENET. But there are already
sites on the net that charge people to read USENET. No, not Portal
or Chinet. Princeton does. Businesses and individuals can buy disk
space and time (cpu and connect) on the IBM's here. If they do then
they have access to USENET, and they are charged for the connect time
spent reading it and the CPU usage involved. Does this make us a
commercial site?
In my opinion, (let me repeat that, IN MY OPINION) so long
as a site is willing accept USENET newsgroups without modifying them,
without claiming ownership of them and as long as its readers can
participate, then it should be allowed to hook up. If it is unwilling
to do this then it should not. A site can screen or censor its own
people all it wants, it should not take it upon itself to screen the
information on the net other than by accepting or not accepting a
group. Anytime some person or site trys to claim some part of the
information flow that is the USENET for its own, then it threatens the
freedom of that flow, and becomes counter to the purpose of the network,
the free exchange of information. (Free as in open, for the the
picky boneheads out there.) Then it should be cut off.
Discussion?
--
Later Y'all, Vnend Ignorance is the mother of adventure.
SCA event list? Mail? Send to:vnend@phoenix.princeton.edu or vnend@pucc.bitnet
Anonymous posting service (NO FLAMES!) at vnend@ms.uky.edu
Love is wanting to keep more than one person happy.brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (03/17/89)
In article <7105@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> vnend@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (D. W. James) writes: >Some questions: > >1) The internet has a certain prohibition against commercial use of the > network. Would traffic in rec.humor.funny, some of which was both > coming from and going to a purely pay-by-the-minute-reading site > (Compuserve, GEnie, etc.) constitute commercial use of the network? I don't see why not, so long as the material going over usenet is not charged for. Portal is for pay. Uunet is for pay, non profit. If material of commercial origin can't go over the internet then all the shareware must be deleted from all FTP archives, such as Simtel-20. > >2) I've seen one person claiming that Brad built rec.humor.funny > practically with his bare hands. I've seen someone else saying > that he was elected. Which was it? Both are true. I built it with my bare hands. Part of that included conducting a vote. The vote was 64 to 1, and this was back in the early days of group voting, so that '100' rule you hear about was flexible. I asked to have it flexed. It was. People agreed, afterwards. (Current readership estimate 57,000, making RHF not only the net's most popular electronic forum, but possibly the entire Earth's (anybody know about France?)) >3) With regards to the commercial systems having access to USENET in general, > don't they claim some copyright to their stuff? If so, will they be > claiming some kind of copyright of the USENET traffic? And, once again, > how does their charging affect the internet? They can claim a copyright on their combination of the traffic they get and their own material. This doesn't mean the usenet traffic on its own isn't still freely distributable. They simply have the choice about what comes from their own machine. All net sites have this power. >*************** (Switch to different user) > > The question of whether Brad is/was intending to use the >compilation copyright for this purpose all along is yet another, >but I really don't see how we can answer it. You can answer it easily. I wrote extensively on the subject last month during that debate. I was quite explicit about the relationship between compilation copyright and feeds to commercial sites, and stated my approval of such links, so long as they were under my control. I did not name any names, of course. Even now, I still haven't finalized any deals with these folks. As for the whole question, Genie is no different from Portal or the Well. The difference is just one of degree. Genie charges more. I say leave it up to the customers to decide which timesharing service gives the best value -- it's not for us to judge the price. There is no question in my mind that if Genie has to go, then Portal, Well and all fee-charging sites have to go, unless they are explicitly non-profit as UUNET is. This would be a mistake. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) (03/19/89)
In article <2958@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: >Genie is no different from Portal or the Well. >The difference is just one of degree. Genie charges more. I say leave it >up to the customers to decide which timesharing service gives the best >value -- it's not for us to judge the price. There is no question in >my mind that if Genie has to go, then Portal, Well and all fee-charging >sites have to go, unless they are explicitly non-profit as UUNET is. >This would be a mistake. I agree. My only concern in all this was raised once before, during debate over a potential Usenet/Compuserve gateway. If r.h.f. gets sent to Genie, will jokes posted to Genie be brought to Usenet? Will Genie be a black hole into which Usenet postings go, without us seeing what's added by Genie subscribers? Public-access-for-pay Usenet sites, even leaf nodes, contribute to the net by spreading around the postings of their subscribers. I make a real distinction between these and sites such as Compuserve, which do not share their contributors' postings with anyone but other subscribers. If the flow of information, be it jokes, source code or abortion arguments, travels in both directions, the gateway can only be a benefit. If Brad gets free time on Genie to help make it work, God bless. But if the Usenet-to-Genie path is one-way only, I do object. -- Evan Leibovitch, SA of System Telly, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario evan@telly.on.ca / {uunet!attcan,utzoo}!telly!evan / (416) 452-0504 You can lead a herring to water, but you have to walk really fast or he'll die
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (03/19/89)
In article <822@telly.UUCP> evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) writes: >If r.h.f. gets sent to Genie, will jokes posted to Genie be brought to >Usenet? Will Genie be a black hole into which Usenet postings go, without >us seeing what's added by Genie subscribers? I believe Brad was quite explicit that the gatewaying envisioned would be bidirectional. -- Welcome to Mars! Your | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology passport and visa, comrade? | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
dattier@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US (=David W. Tamkin) (03/20/89)
In <1989Mar19.053739.6478@utzoo.uucp> Henry Spencer wrote: | In article <822@telly.UUCP> evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) writes: | >If r.h.f. gets sent to Genie, will jokes posted to Genie be brought to | >Usenet? Will Genie be a black hole into which Usenet postings go, without | >us seeing what's added by Genie subscribers? | | I believe Brad was quite explicit that the gatewaying envisioned would | be bidirectional. It must be two weeks now since I posted the same question: will it really be bidirectional, and what, if anything, does Brad Templeton have IN WRITING from GEnie or BIX to promise that? I find it less than easy to believe that the pay-by-the-minute systems will open their offerings to a large readership who won't be paying them and in fact will shell money out to the very person who is giving the goods away. David W. Tamkin Post Office Box 567542 Norridge, Illinois 60656-7542 dattier@jolnet.orpk.il.us Jolnet Public Access Unix GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN ...!killer!jolnet!dattier Orland Park, Illinois CIS: 73720,1570 Anyone on Jolnet who agrees with me is welcome to speak up on his or her own.
mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) (03/21/89)
In article <1989Mar19.053739.6478@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <822@telly.UUCP> evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) writes: >>If r.h.f. gets sent to Genie, will jokes posted to Genie be brought to >>Usenet? Will Genie be a black hole into which Usenet postings go, without >>us seeing what's added by Genie subscribers? > >I believe Brad was quite explicit that the gatewaying envisioned would >be bidirectional. > In that case, it would seem that Usenet would be getting something added for 'free', which would be right in line with what I've seen so far of normal net practice -- in which case, it might be more palatable to some folks to say that Brad is getting paid as a 'gatekeeper' rather than as a 'moderator', and the pay is coming from the 'other' side of the gate, after all. (Frankly, I don't think Brad cares *what* the money-accepting role is called, but the verbal reorientation may, again, be helpful to some others.) Cheers, --Mark +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Mark Gresham ARTSNET Atlanta, GA, USA E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
w-colinp@microsoft.UUCP (Colin Plumb) (03/22/89)
Sigh.. this is wierd. Re: the r.h.f debate (the one about the Genie gateway, not the one about compilation copyrights or JEDR or any others I mat have missed), the fact that Genie is picling up r.h.f is not really a cause for flaming. They could do it, quietly, one day, to any newsgroup. Disconnecting them from the net against their opposition could be tricky if they set up multiple links and don't actively offend. This sort of thing would be comparable to Portal or some such... a pay-by-use service is making its users pay per use of netnews. Because Genie charges a lot more than Portal, people would probably get excited. Nonetheless, it wouldn't hurt netnews. How could it? So netnews goes one more place. Sites join all the time. So they manage to dupe a lot of people out of money? I still get netnews for the price of my hardware and phone bills, as always. I can still talk to everyone I used to be able to. No loss to me. I can't see any way this can lead to the imminent demose of the net. If they start trying to claim copyright over netnews, it would be unbelievably stupid, impossible to do, and would scare all their feeds into disconnecting. No more news, no more copyright. End of problem. If they fed material back into netnews, the same thing applies, although some harm could come if they have a lot of idiots flooding the net with garbage. This is not a new problem. This tapping could be done in a very fascist way, and still not change the netnews we all see. So I can't imagine it could suddenly make the groups they gateway "commercial" in the eyes of DARPA, the Internet, or anyone else. However, some people object to this sort of thing, and, as Brad points out, Genie can't do it with r.h.f because Brad claims his compilation copyright. Personally, I'd prefer he didn't bother, and *if there was trouble* add one. So someone he dislikes gets a few weeks of r.h.f. No big deal, really, and he'd have net.opinion on his side. The draft looks amazingly good when there's an unfriendly army on the way... But anyway, Brad intends to use his control to ensure that Genie users' contributions get to usenet for all of us to enjoy. And, as always, it doesn't cost us more than spool space. More jokes to choose from means better jokes, is good for me. Hooray! The objection people seem to have is that brad is taking their material (sometimes from rec.humor, without their knowledge), claiming some control over it (this was the old debate the current one linked up to) and getting paid by Genie for reposting it. This business of my joke, you get the money seems to be the greatest point of dissention. And, yeah, I'm not too sure about it myself. I prefer the comp.sources.unix and comp.dcom.telecom philosophies myself. But I can live with less saintly attitudes. AND, I'm willing to trust Brad. If something nasty happens, it leaves no more than a bad taste in my mouth, and I can axe rec.humor.funny, badmouth Brad, and write muck-raking letters to the K-W Record. If it goes well, great! I don't see any way whatsoever that giving it a trial will cause more harm to the net than the congenstion on this issue already has. Can Genie make me pay for the net? No. Can Genie in any way obstruct my current net access? They could flood the net with garbage, or they could, over the years, make lots of connections and then drop them all overnight, causing great net.confusion for some months, but this is the absolute worst they can do. If they threaten legal action of any sort, I don't doubt all their feeds will axe them instantly. What is this? I feed you, and you threaten to sue me? Go play by yourself! So I just can't manage to get excited about it. The existence of Brad's compilation copyright in the first place, I can sort of worry about. Especially the rec.humor culls. But a Genie gateway, no. Anyway... dattier@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US (David W. Tamkin) wrote: > | I believe Brad was quite explicit that the gatewaying envisioned would > | be bidirectional. > > It must be two weeks now since I posted the same question: will it really be > bidirectional, and what, if anything, does Brad Templeton have IN WRITING > from GEnie or BIX to promise that? I dunno. In reality, it doesn't matter. If Genie tries to stop him, he'll drop Genie. So he loses a few potential jokes. Big deal. > I find it less than easy to believe that the pay-by-the-minute systems will > open their offerings to a large readership who won't be paying them and in > fact will shell money out to the very person who is giving the goods away. Well, they know Brad will claim his own compilation copyright on r.h.f, so they must be happy already. To repeat: I wouldn't worry about it. If it turns out that Brad suddenly transforms into some horrible monster, you'll have no problems getting r.h.f rmgroup'd. But for now, think: what is the worst that could possibly happen in the month or so it would take between the start of the bad behaviour and the net-wide rmgroup? All I can see is Genie freeloading a lot and being snotty about reverse traffic. For 30 days or so. Is this disaster? -- -Colin (uunet!microsoft!w-colinp) "Don't listen to me. I never do." - The Doctor