karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (02/14/89)
patrick@chinet.chi.il.us writes:
Now in the example cited, here comes Compuserve; willing to take all it
No, it's not, and you should stop abusing the name of an organization
which has never even appeared here of their own will. They are not an
example of *anything* as regards the Usenet.
can get for free and re-sell the cooperative efforts of others for $6 per
hour.
CompuServe has been misused as an example so many times that it's no
longer funny. They have been abused in absentia without justification
as some sort of evil presence Out There Someplace from which everyone
is desperately trying to hide Our Good Work.
Y'know, if I packaged up a whole mess of this discussion and foisted
it off on a few interesting people I know across town, I imagine that
there's a couple of Usenetters who just might get informative notes
from people whose titles end in "attorney at law," which notes would
make fascinating comments regarding defamation and slander and libel
and whatever other legalese applies to this situation.
But then, I don't know, since I don't/can't know what is going inside
CServe at this moment, and hence it is entirely possible that I'm
being just as abusive by suggesting such a thing.
*That* is my point: You have no idea what goes on inside CompuServe.
None whatever. I have some, having dealt with them fairly extensively
for quite some time, knowing more than a couple of people who work[ed]
inside it, and having had to deal at a non-trivial level with the
political machinery which it embodies, up to and including the level
of people with job titles like Chief Technical Officer.
Be aware that CompuServe barely knows that Usenet exists. When
CServe's UNIX Forum was created, it took not a small amount of
discussion with the Powers That Be there to make them realize that an
entity comprising more than a million people, a couple hundred
thousand active participants, and thousands of computers could exist
without a formalized power structure. They had to be mollified that
there was no way that a "Usenet, Inc" could come after them in any way
for any reason. There are individuals within CServe that know quite a
lot about Usenet, but in my experience they create an almost empty
intersection with the set which controls the sorts of services CServe
provides.
The thought of gatewaying Usenet with CServe "forums" was debated and
thrown out for at least 3 reasons. Legal: CServe does indeed have a
compilation copyright on the entire contents of CompuServe Information
Service (deliberately not equivalent to CompuServe, Inc itself), and
that compilation copyright could not be easily reconciled with the
anarchy of the Usenet. Enter the new wrinkle of there being
compilation copyrights claimed out here, and the matter becomes much
more muddied indeed. Political: The lack of knowledge of Usenet
within CompuServe makes it darn difficult to get the Powers That Be to
deal with this non-entity, especially because it becomes essentially
impossible to negotiate with a non-entity. Social: Like it or not,
CServe forums are not a whole lot like Usenet newsgroups in a social
sense, and gatewaying one into the other would create some AWFUL
repercussions, based on the opinions of at least a dozen people with
whom I talked about it. The similarity ends with a formal definition
such as, "An electronic medium in which people post messages in a
memo-like format." Anything about the respective formats more than
that cannot be compared directly. Don't think that it would be
possible simply to shout CServe users down for improper Usenetiquette
as per Portal with perjoratives like, "...when you figure out REAL
networks...," because CompuServe comprises more subscribers than
Usenet does, and they'd shout back - louder and in greater numbers.
There is something to be said about the importance of distributing
information; yes, we do want our messages to be widely disseminated, and
our information FREELY available to others.
If you were to address a definition of `free' in order to make the
question meaningful, especially as regards availability -vs-
economics, you might be going somewhere. I consider that you have
not. For myself, I post certain things out of a desire to make
information available, without any thought whatever to the improvement
of my economic condition. I do not care that, e.g., Portal's owners
are very probably making a small (or large) fortune off this sort of
thing, and that my contributions are helping in that occurrence.
All this suggests an equally important point regarding your reference
to whether "we...want our messages...disseminated," seeing as how the
possibility of getting an agreement out of <however many Usenet
participants there are> to <do anything at all> is zero - just ponder
the difficulty of getting a decision made about whether a new
newsgroup should be created.
I suggest that large commercial entities such as CompuServe will never
gateway Usenet into their systems, not because they don't wish to have
to ponder the possibility of pursuing legal action against little
semantic nothings like you and me, but rather because they are more
concerned that YOU will abuse THEM - just as you have already. How
would YOU like to enter this environment at this point, if your name
had been subjected to as much abuse as CompuServe's has up to now?
We overlook/ignore modest user fees of the $10 per month Portal type or
the $50 per year (frequently written off) Chinet type.
Why? What is it about $10/month that constitutes a "modest" fee?
What are you arguing, other than an issue of degree?
Is it not possible that, given the set of services which CServe
offers, $6/hr is really quite "modest" as well? If you are not aware
(from other comments, I don't believe that you are - please correct me
if I'm wrong), CServe offers a whole heck of a lot more than
Usenettish newsgroups/forums. Although I personally do not find them
useful, there is a huge variety of other services (stock exchange
access, travel services, VAST software repositories, email with
gateways to certain other systems including MCI, the list goes on - I
am not trying to make a commercial but rather to stress a point) which
CServe offers; these services make it quite a valuable resource to
some 438,000 (last time I asked) subscribers. These people put up
with CServe's charges without nary a sigh because of the value they
perceive they have gained by it. They evidently consider those fees
"modest." Whose version of "modest" is correct here? Yours? Why?
But I do not think we can afford to overlook the
commercial resale of our cooperative, goodwill efforts on Usenet.
You already have. Can you say with any surety that your "cooperative,
goodwill efforts" are not *already* being resold commercially
somewhere? Tell me, Is CompuServe already on the Usenet? How sure
are you of the answer you just gave? There's a 3B2/400 in my basement
that takes a full newsfeed off of osu-cis, and it speaks with
CompuServe for certain purposes every hour on the hour - how do you
know that I am not already feeding CompuServe? (I speak now in an
abstract sense, of course, to drive a point home. No, I do not feed
CompuServe. But maybe someone else does - have you asked
eric@snark.uu.net? And if he doesn't, does someone else besides?)
Just how profitable is Portal? Do you know? I doubt its proprietors
are the least interested in telling you just how profitable they are,
but a couple of months back I saw someone's back-of-the-envelope
calculation which suggested that Portal pulls in a horrendous amount
of money, at least 6 figures, probably 7 and possibly 8. Again, you
are arguing degree where you cannot even be sure of the scales on
which you're standing, and you're ending up with the malignment of an
organization which is entirely *innocent* due to its complete lack of
presence on this network! How dare you?!?
Ask them sometime: would CIS make an exception for Usenet, if they took it
for themselves? Would they exclude it from their copyright claims and permit
it to be re-displayed elsewhere? I doubt it. If anything, I fully suspect
that if CIS did start taking Usenet stuff, it would only be a matter of
time until *their attornies* started making threatening noises at us, and
making all sorts of condescending remarks.
Let's talk abuse of name. Really and truly.
An entity which you cannot prove has any knowledge of anything you do
has just had its name dragged into the mud by you for purported
intention to cause you and others pain and difficulty.
Just WHO is abusing WHOM, huh?
I saw that BIX has a machine on Usenet (bixpb; cf. <20[03456]@bixpb>,
mostly in news.* newsgroups; <200@bixpb> is their news.newsites
announcement of existence), and one of their people said that they are
intending to gateway certain things into BIX. Before you continue
this baseless tirade against an organization which doesn't even know
you exist, why don't you address your complaints in very explicit,
specific form to this other entity which has actually published its
intention to do precisely the things you fear? Look in news.misc,
<205@bixpb>, and address your comments to bixpb!bensmith.
I'd have to say stay clear of feeding commercial networks unless and until
we, meaning the Usenet community, have full control of the output, and the
There are some people who would like to have full control of the
output of your mouth and keyboard. And they'd be more justified in
their attack on you on the basis of what you've said/written than you
are in your attacks on the still-innocent CompuServe.
terms are to our liking. *Their* reward is in the money they hustle from
their bozo users. *Our* reward is in seeing the results of our collective
efforts each day. Unless we write the terms, then there should be no terms.
[a] There's that "we" and "our" nonsense again.
[b] A little *ad hominem* against CServe users never hurt anyone, did it?
[c] A little *ad hominem* about commercial entities "hustling" their
income never hurt, either, huh?
Jeesh!
--Karl
PS- I have absolutely, positively no commercial affiliation with
CompuServe. I was, for most of a year, the original technical sysop
on its UNIX Forum, a forum which I helped create and a position which
I held as a volunteer - not paid. I gave it up when it became obvious
that I could not dedicate the time to serve its users properly. I
also am working to the completion of an Internet-CompuServe mail
gateway, which again is a dollars-free effort on my part. However,
many CompuServe employees are my friends, and whatever the technical
and political foibles be that occur inside CompuServe, they do not
deserve the extensive abuse which has been heaped upon them
gratuitously from the Usenet.dattier@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US (David Tamkin) (02/14/89)
In <KARL.89Feb13142234@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu> Karl Kleinpaste wrote: | Just how profitable is Portal? Do you know? I doubt its proprietors | are the least interested in telling you just how profitable they are, | but a couple of months back I saw someone's back-of-the-envelope | calculation which suggested that Portal pulls in a horrendous amount | of money, at least 6 figures, probably 7 and possibly 8. I wonder if the owner of that envelope knows much about Portal firsthand. All account numbers I have seen on Portal have been of the form 1.1001.####. The owners' accounts are 1.1001.1000 and 1.1001.1001. There is a direct arithmetic correlation with how long a customer has been on line there, so I am quite confident in assuming that they are assigned consecutively. The newest people I meet there have account numbers in the low 1.1001.7000's. Some accounts belong to Portal Communications for internal use; some are without monthly charge for use by conference administrators; many, many have been canceled fairly quickly because Portal is a very difficult system to get comfortable on if you are a novice telecommunicator or if you are used to systems with a more mainline command structure and presentation, such as CompuServe, GEnie, and People/Link. Additionally, before Portal began to verify sign-ups that had been placed by modem before issuing accounts, a lot of accounts went out to phony names or credit cards and were subsequently canceled as soon as charges were bounced (if not sooner because the user became abusive under the imagined protection of false account record information). Now, I truly do not believe that there are any other classes of accounts; when I signed up by voice call, no one for an instant questioned me about which division of the system I wanted to subscribe to. If there are other departments on Portal, sealed off from the Portal System, they appear to have no access to Usenet, for it is only those of us on cup.portal.com who have ever posted there from Portal, so perhaps revenue from these theoretical other classes of accounts is irrelevant to this discussion. To say that of the six thousand accounts issued five thousand remain active would be a liberal estimate indeed. At $120 per year, that brings in $600,000. Now, a few people, none of whom hang around on line much, do pay collect Telenet charges to call Portal, on which Portal turns at the extreme most 10c/hr. If five hundred of their customers call that way and are on about eight hours per month average (twelve would be the maximum, for beyond twelve hours per month they are better off using P C Pursuit), that comes to $4800 per year. As for Portal's own connect charges, the one area of which I know that had an hourly surcharge failed quite rapidly and the other never got under way. After all, people use Portal instead of its competitors in order to avoid the ticking meter more than for any other reason. There are also sign-up fees, $15 per account. Referred accounts get the referring customer a $5 bounty. Phony credit cards mean never collecting the $15 (and ending up eating the collect Telenet charges that the offender runs up), and let's say that, well, six thousand accounts in not quite three years with some acceleration make, say, a current rate of 3500 new accounts per year? If 20% are referrals, where Portal collects only $10, and I should think that I'm erring on the side of overestimating revenue again, that comes to $49,000, shall we say? So, there is about $654,000 annual revenue apparent here. Some of the organizations that have areas on Portal might pay for the space. I find it impossible to imagine that those would push my already high estimate into the eight- or even seven-figure range. Whatever they pay, is that revenue to be considered in a discussion about reselling Usenet? So as a Portal customer I find the figures from Mr. Kleinpaste's friend's envelope to require an extreme stretch of the imagination. And we haven't even begun to consider the expenses against that revenue. I don't know what the envelope owner or Mr. Kleinpaste were thinking at the time, but I can easily see how readers of his article will neglect to allocate for Portal's other offerings besides its Usenet gateway and read his article to say that Portal turns gets figures annually for Usenet. At least six figures? Yes. Probably seven? A weak maybe. Possibly eight? No blinking way. If anyone wishes to reply in email, please direct the response to my Portal account rather than to Jolnet. David_W_Tamkin@cup.portal.com ... sun!portal!cup.portal.com!David_W_Tamkin Disclaimer: I speak solely from my own observations as a Portal customer. 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.
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (02/15/89)
I have a moderately popular program that I have released as shareware. I continually get notes from people that such-and-such an evil company is including my program in a compilation and *charging* people for it! Horrors... Sometimes it's taken me several exchanges to explain to these people that (1) What these companies are doing is legal. (2) What's more, it's ethical. (3) And I approve of it. And then to try to convince them that I have good reasons for taking this view. Oh well. At least they have the courtesy to ask me before blasting said company in public for *ripping me off*. The more people get to see my program, the better off I am, and the better off they are. If the only access they have is via Compuserve, then I certainly don't want to deprive them of it. -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Work: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. `-_-' Home: bigtex!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.uu.net. 'U` Opinions may not represent the policies of FICC or the Xenix Support group.
karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (02/15/89)
dattier@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US (David Tamkin) writes: | [I posited on the profitability of Portal] I wonder if the owner of that envelope knows much about Portal firsthand. Very little. [A discussion on what is known about Portal income, firsthand.] At least six figures? Yes. Probably seven? A weak maybe. Possibly eight? No blinking way. I stand corrected, and offer my apologies for apparent misinformation. I was not attempting to abuse Portal, but to point out that relative profitability is in no way related to presence on the Usenet. I was not referring to any personal friend's calculation, but rather to one posted to the net some months back in one of the ritual-abuse- of-Portal episodes that plagues the Usenet. The specific instance was when Portal was being claimed to be an abusive member of Usenet through, I believe, refusal to use `real IDs' on the network, followed shortly thereafter by the highly responsible action on the part of Portal management of amending their user guidelines/policies. --Karl
patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) (02/16/89)
In article <KARL.89Feb13142234@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu> karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) writes: >patrick@chinet.chi.il.us writes: > Now in the example cited, here comes Compuserve; willing to take all it > >No, it's not, and you should stop abusing the name of an organization >which has never even appeared here of their own will. They are not an >example of *anything* as regards the Usenet. > > can get for free and re-sell the cooperative efforts of others for $6 per > hour. > >CompuServe has been misused as an example so many times that it's no >longer funny. They have been abused in absentia without justification >as some sort of evil presence Out There Someplace from which everyone >is desperately trying to hide Our Good Work. I will not comment on Our Good Work. But I will point out that CompuServe has behaved in an arrogant manner on several occassions; and they have committed acts which some attornies might consider illegal. They have received numerous public domain software programs from their subscribers, given to them in good faith, and used their compilation-copyright to effectively remove the program from circulation *outside their system* for good. Ask a few BBS sysops who have had the 'audacity' to download a public domain program from CIS and put it on their free, public service BBS for their users what happened to them. They got cease and desist letters from an attorney for CIS. They have no compunction against interception of email; and non-delivery of same when the contents are displeasing to them. Just like Bill McGowan of MCI Mail, if they don't care for your email, you are as good as gone as a subscriber. At least Chairman McGowan is brazen enough to admit it openly: 'We at MCI are not required to service customers we don't like.' Even though a subscriber to CompuServe is entitled to use any of the SIGS available; a subscriber still has to pass muster with people like Alex Krisloff in order to actually *retain* access to SIGS dealing with social issues discussion. More than one user has suddenly found access to a SIG was suddenly denied after having had a fight with the moderator the day before. If the expelled user then makes an appeal to the Product Manager or some other executive at CIS, access to the SIG may or may not be restored. There have been allegations by users of CIS' CB program that private conversations between users during the night, a/k/a 'compusex' are monitored for kicks by the operator(s) on local terminals, and that an operator will occassionally interject a typed remark on the screen of one of the people in the conversation, leading them to accuse the other person of having 'said that thing'. >Y'know, if I packaged up a whole mess of this discussion and foisted >it off on a few interesting people I know across town, I imagine that >there's a couple of Usenetters who just might get informative notes >from people whose titles end in "attorney at law," which notes would >make fascinating comments regarding defamation and slander and libel >and whatever other legalese applies to this situation. If you please! So that there is no misunderstanding, my name is Patrick A. Townson. My address is- Patrick A. Townson 60690-1570 That is quite sufficient. I get mail every day and I *always* sign for my registered and certified mail. Do tell the attorney I'll gladly accept Service anytime. >whose title ends in 'attorney at law'.... Jeeze H. Don't you see my knees shaking while I load my pants at that threat? The last time I counted, attornies were a dime a dozen. The USA is full of them. >*That* is my point: You have no idea what goes on inside CompuServe. >None whatever. I have some, having dealt with them fairly extensively >for quite some time, knowing more than a couple of people who work[ed] >inside it, and having had to deal at a non-trivial level with the >political machinery which it embodies, up to and including the level >of people with job titles like Chief Technical Officer. Oh, you bet I know plenty. I was on CIS in 1980-81-82 myself, and still remain friends with a couple people who have moderator-like functions on a couple of SIGS. >Be aware that CompuServe barely knows that Usenet exists. Compuserve barely knows that *anyone* exists besides themselves. If there were such a thing as a map of the universe in a file on CIS somewhere, I dare say it would show a cluster in the center called 'CompuServe' with lots of small round things going in orbit around it. > There is something to be said about the importance of distributing > information; yes, we do want our messages to be widely disseminated, and > our information FREELY available to others. > >If you were to address a definition of `free' in order to make the >question meaningful, especially as regards availability -vs- >economics, you might be going somewhere. I consider that you have >not. For myself, I post certain things out of a desire to make >information available, without any thought whatever to the improvement >of my economic condition. I do not care that, e.g., Portal's owners >are very probably making a small (or large) fortune off this sort of >thing, and that my contributions are helping in that occurrence. My economic condition is not relevant either. But the fact that I give something for free which someone else chooses to resell is relevant. And neither Portal nor Chinet -- and certainly not Chinet -- are making any money from my stuff. >All this suggests an equally important point regarding your reference >to whether "we...want our messages...disseminated," seeing as how the >possibility of getting an agreement out of <however many Usenet >participants there are> to <do anything at all> is zero - just ponder >the difficulty of getting a decision made about whether a new >newsgroup should be created. But none the less, the decision does get made eventually. >I suggest that large commercial entities such as CompuServe will never >gateway Usenet into their systems, not because they don't wish to have >to ponder the possibility of pursuing legal action against little >semantic nothings like you and me, but rather because they are more >concerned that YOU will abuse THEM - just as you have already. How >would YOU like to enter this environment at this point, if your name >had been subjected to as much abuse as CompuServe's has up to now? I like your description of yourself as a 'semantic nothing'. It does not apply to me, however. You I would say yes. It fits you to a 'T'. > We overlook/ignore modest user fees of the $10 per month Portal type or > the $50 per year (frequently written off) Chinet type. > >Why? What is it about $10/month that constitutes a "modest" fee? >What are you arguing, other than an issue of degree? $10 per month is *pennies* per hour based on typical Portal subscriber usage. I know. I was a subscriber for two years. The users sit in chat for hours on end. Chinet's $50 per year comes to $4.17 per month; again for users who spend an hour or two per day on the box. How much is this per hour? In your opinion, does 'free' have to literally mean without any charge whatsoever? Should Portal and Chinet also supply the phone line and the modem for their subscribers? >Is it not possible that, given the set of services which CServe >offers, $6/hr is really quite "modest" as well? If you are not aware >(from other comments, I don't believe that you are - please correct me >if I'm wrong), CServe offers a whole heck of a lot more than >Usenettish newsgroups/forums. Although I personally do not find them >useful, there is a huge variety of other services (stock exchange >access, travel services, VAST software repositories, email with >gateways to certain other systems including MCI, the list goes on - I >am not trying to make a commercial but rather to stress a point) which >CServe offers; these services make it quite a valuable resource to >some 438,000 (last time I asked) subscribers. These people put up >with CServe's charges without nary a sigh because of the value they >perceive they have gained by it. They evidently consider those fees >"modest." Whose version of "modest" is correct here? Yours? Why? But in fact, CIS makes its profit (last time I asked) from CB Simulator and its funny uncle 'compusex'. Does anyone *really* use the Collier's Encyclopedia or the Official Airline Guide, both of which carry a surcharge by the way? My version of 'modest' is correct. Why? Simple math: a few cents per hour is less than $6 per hour. Are YOU suggesting the extra features offered on CIS are worth several hundred percent more in usage fees? CB Simulator carries the rest of CompuServe, you know. > But I do not think we can afford to overlook the > commercial resale of our cooperative, goodwill efforts on Usenet. > >You already have. Can you say with any surety that your "cooperative, >goodwill efforts" are not *already* being resold commercially >somewhere? No, of course there is no absolute guarentee of this, short of having one or more persons constantly scanning other media, printed or electronic, looking for duplications. We believe they are not being resold. Tell me, Is CompuServe already on the Usenet? How sure >are you of the answer you just gave? There's a 3B2/400 in my basement >that takes a full newsfeed off of osu-cis, and it speaks with >CompuServe for certain purposes every hour on the hour - how do you >know that I am not already feeding CompuServe? (I speak now in an >abstract sense, of course, to drive a point home. No, I do not feed >CompuServe. But maybe someone else does - have you asked >eric@snark.uu.net? And if he doesn't, does someone else besides?) I believe the people who handle Usenet traffic are doing so in an honorable way. Perhaps, based on your remark, eric@snark.uu.net should have HIS 'attorney at law' contact YOURS. >Just how profitable is Portal? Do you know? I doubt its proprietors >are the least interested in telling you just how profitable they are, >but a couple of months back I saw someone's back-of-the-envelope >calculation which suggested that Portal pulls in a horrendous amount >of money, at least 6 figures, probably 7 and possibly 8. Again, you >are arguing degree where you cannot even be sure of the scales on >which you're standing, and you're ending up with the malignment of an >organization which is entirely *innocent* due to its complete lack of >presence on this network! How dare you?!? Its time for Math 101: General Arithmetic. Please take off your shoes so when we reach ten you can count with me to twenty. At $10 per month, how many subscribers are required to obtain $100,000, the smallest possible 'six digit figure'? That would require 10,000 subscribers, wouldn't it? The smallest possible 'seven digit figure', 1,000,000 would require 100,000 people paying $10, wouldn't it? Are these six, seven and eight digit figures you are tossing around supposed to represent monthly revenue or yearly revenue? If yearly, then we would divide by 12 and come up with 833 subscribers generating minimal six digit revenue, or 8333 subscribers generating minimal seven digit revenue. Of course, 83,333 subscribers would be required to generate minimal eight digit revenue, if you were talking annual revenue and not monthly. I can assure you Portal does not have 8333 or 83,333 subscribers. In any event, that six or seven digit figure would be GROSS INCOME, would it not? So let's say there are a couple thousand subscribers,and the gross income per year is in the $240,000 range, which I think is stretching it a little, but let's go with it. An operation with 2000 subscribers which operates 24 hours per day will have at least one person there around the clock, right? So considering 8 hour shifts; 40 hour weeks with no overtime, we have a five person payroll. In all the times I have called on the phone I've never reached anyone there but John Little, Phil Sih, or once, a young lady who was 'customer service'. Even three people making modest wages would require ($25 x 3) = $75,000 per year. Five people would be $125,000. Since they have all taken vows of poverty, they don't actually get a salary, but merely the enjoyment of answering stupid email letters from subscribers. How much per year does Pacific Bell get for a dozen dialup phone lines per month/year? How much does Telenet charge for a PAD? Why nothing, of course! Telenet gives them away free, under the theory of constitutional law espoused by single-server BBS users everywhere: I have the right to be entertained on your computer at your expense. Ask any sysop! Naturally, Sun gives away computers and peripherals to worthy causes. They would never think of sending invoices out to the nice people at Portal. And maintainence contracts? Who needs maintainence, anyway? The landlord is contributing the building; and the local electric works provides the juice. All free, of course. Try to be for real, okay? Whenever $10 per month per user on a time sharing computer system can be parlayed into even a very low 'six digit figure' PROFIT for the proprietors, a lot of people will want to know how it was done. And I don't know how many subscribers Portal has (other than they do not have 83,000), and I do not know what their expenses are. But you should be able to see, even with your shoes on, how absurd your statement was on its face. >I saw that BIX has a machine on Usenet (bixpb; cf. <20[03456]@bixpb>, >mostly in news.* newsgroups; <200@bixpb> is their news.newsites >announcement of existence), and one of their people said that they are >intending to gateway certain things into BIX. Before you continue >this baseless tirade against an organization which doesn't even know >you exist, why don't you address your complaints in very explicit, >specific form to this other entity which has actually published its >intention to do precisely the things you fear? Look in news.misc, ><205@bixpb>, and address your comments to bixpb!bensmith. As a matter of fact, I have written to Ben Smith. I told him who I was, and my area of responsibility on Usenet. I told him that if his organization wanted to use the material within the news.group I administer, a couple things would have to happen first: we would need to have a long and candid conversation about TWO-WAY SHARING between us. There would have to be a working, convenient and easy to use address FOR ME ON HIS SYSTEM where his users could respond to items in 'my' news.group and add new contributions of their own. I told him if he was willing to talk in those terms, I would present the matter to the net at large here. I told him I was not interested in a one way feed. > I'd have to say stay clear of feeding commercial networks unless and until > we, meaning the Usenet community, have full control of the output, and the > >There are some people who would like to have full control of the >output of your mouth and keyboard. And they'd be more justified in >their attack on you on the basis of what you've said/written than you >are in your attacks on the still-innocent CompuServe. Still innocent CompuServe? As the late Jack Benny would phrase it, "Really, Mary"... And as for attacks on me, Oscar Wilde expressed my views completely when he said he could care less what others on Usenet said about him as long as they spelled his name correctly. Or was it the London newspapers he was speaking about? I don't remember. >PS- I have absolutely, positively no commercial affiliation with >CompuServe. I was, for most of a year, the original technical sysop >on its UNIX Forum, a forum which I helped create and a position which >I held as a volunteer - not paid. I gave it up when it became obvious >that I could not dedicate the time to serve its users properly. I >also am working to the completion of an Internet-CompuServe mail >gateway, which again is a dollars-free effort on my part. However, >many CompuServe employees are my friends, and whatever the technical >and political foibles be that occur inside CompuServe, they do not >deserve the extensive abuse which has been heaped upon them >gratuitously from the Usenet. So now the truth is known. We see the axe you have to grind. You'd love to see your gateway project be a success. I'll bet you would! Has CIS said how much of a cut they will give you on each peice of email you pass? Will it be the same arrangement they have with MCI? Why did you save this last paragraph till the end of your message rather than say it in the beginning? Afraid too many people would 'n' past the rest of it? You sure could have saved me a lot of time typing a response! -- Patrick Townson patrick@chinet.chi.il.us / US Mail: 60690-1570 (personal zip code) FIDO: 115/743 / AT&T Mail: 529-6378 (!ptownson) / MCI Mail: 222-4956
rogol@marob.MASA.COM (Fred Buck) (02/17/89)
In article <KARL.89Feb13142234@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu> karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) writes: > [flame about derogatory references to Compuserve] In article <7725@chinet.chi.il.us> patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) writes: > [counterflame about how Compuserve bites the Big One] I detect some unwarranted heatedness on both sides here. First, it's expectable, if not pleasing, to see people still engaging in emotionally-driven putdowns like referring to Compuserve's "bozo users." In the microcomputer world, the same tendencies engendered things like the "Trash-80" label and all the bad things TRS-80 people had to say about stupid designs like the Apple microcomputer and about how CP/M was a mere program-loader. Unix people have had similar things to say about the IBM personal computers, and they're right in this insofar as the IBM personal computers don't have an, ahem, operating system comparable to Unix. On the other hand, there's a lot of functionality that exists in software for IBM personal computers despite all the deficiencies of the operating system. I know of no computer system that can be arbitrarily dismissed as useless. Denigrating users of any such system solely on that account is just externalized self-flagellation. Second, I think the same thing is surfacing here about Compuserve. I'll introduce myself up front, so as not to offend Mr. Townson: I am the primary sysop of the Compuserve Tangent Forum, which is in essence a nationwide BBS for the Tangent Group. The Tangent Group is a loose association of business users of Tandy computer products, formed back when Tandy was the only manufacturer of a PC-level Xenix machine. Nowadays, the association with Tandy is more tenuous. However, over the half-decade or more that the Tangent Forum has existed, quite a number of businessmen and Unix/Xenix consultants have formed links through the Compuserve Tangent Forum, and have benefited each other not only by public exchange of technical information but also by the formation of referral networks. Few if any of these people have the time or patience to sift through the rafts of Usenet verbiage to get a specific answer to a specific problem. And for few of those is it possible to >get< such an answer from the Usenet. There are tens of thousands of businesses running some variant of Small Computer Company's "FilePro" database software in the U.S.A.; many of these have questions about how to do this or that, or fix this or that bug; is the Usenet of great help here? In this respect, the Compuserve Tangent Forum serves a need that the Usenet doesn't address. I dwell on this because the Tangent Forum is simply one example. Most retail users of Compuserve don't live in worlds where Usenet is an option. The vast majority of Macintosh users, for instance, feel about Unix the way you'd feel about smallpox, and then you can add in the Atari and Commodore and Apple users, and the people who don't care about hardware or software but who have special interests, such as broadcasting professionals, motor racing reporters, and a list too long for me to make any representative illustration. Many of the non-computer-related areas depend on up-to-the-minute reports from the field, not by Compuserve people but by people hooked into the Forums, of which there are now something like 300. I know of at least a dozen Compuserve Forums where sysops and members phone in time-sensitive information from pay phones on location with laptop computers, nationwide. And then there are areas such as the Disability Forum, where the disabled can reach potentially critical information and support from others, either themselves disabled or with pathways to needed info, where constraints like Usenet propagation delays aren't acceptable: sometimes you need something to cite to person X the next morning. Dismissing all of this as "basically compusex" is speaking too quickly. Software is available to minimize connect time when using Compuserve Forums, and Compuserve not only tolerates such software but encourages it. Many people can achieve full bandwidth for several chosen Forums at a cost of something like $20 to $30 per month, or less, using these tools. The additional facilities besides the Forums are less significant, but I question your assertion that the Citizen's-Band-Simulator and "compusex" dominate Compuserve's revenues. (I speak here of course about the Compuserve Information Service, which is a retail operation, not about Compuserve Incorporated, which encompasses a great deal more.) In point of fact, the bulk of Compuserve's retail revenues comes from Forum use, even given the automated navigator programs referred to in the previous paragraph. And the use of the other facilities that you deride is more common than you seem to believe. I myself have paid to use the Grolier encyclopedia (the cost is something like $14 for a six-month subscription) and I have a friend, who reads the Usenet regularly, who has saved substantial sums using the OAG instead of making direct reservations. I simply don't see what the problem is here, between you and Karl. Karl is almost certainly correct that Compuserve has no interest in Usenet. Compuserve does claim a compilation copyright, but its enforcement of this copyright is not so heavy-handed as you suggest. Only one private BBS sysop that I know of has got a letter from Compuserve counsel, and that BBS sysop had been publishing on his BBS a program taken from the Apple-Computer section of Compuserve that the program's author had said was copyrighted. The action by Compuserve was prompted by the author's complaint to the Apple-Computer sysop. Compuserve allows anybody to distribute stuff from Compuserve for free, provided that it's not packaged as something direct from Compuserve (for example, "This archive contains the entire contents of the Compuserve XYZ Forum File Libraries"). And of course, Compuserve cannot forbid any republication expressly sanctioned by the holder of the copyright. When I write a program and upload it to a Compuserve Forum Library, and I say in the text that I permit anyone to use the text for any purpose for free, Compuserve's compilation copyright is subsumed in my express license. (The same would be true, of course, about an article in rec.humor.funny: if the original article says anyone can copy it, then anyone can copy it, no matter what Brad says.) As Karl observes, why all this Compuserve bashing? There hasn't been any provocation that I've been able to see. Why not just take your own stream, and let different streams drift along as they will unless they impinge on yours? I derive no income from either Compuserve or the Tangent Group, which is a not-for-profit corporation. Compuserve and the Usenet serve different purposes, and I use both. I am not affiliated in any way with Compuserve, nor with the Tangent Group except that I am a member of the latter, and perform administrative services on Compuserve for the Tangent Forum there, out of the goodness of my heart. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred Buck { uunet, rutgers }!hombre!marob!rogol { uunet, rutgers }!hombre!magpie!lemur!rogol { uunet, rutgers }!rogol@marob.masa.com Compuserve: 73327,3604 Sysop, Tangent Forum (GO TANGENT) ------------------------------------------------------------------
dricejb@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson drilex1) (02/18/89)
I didn't wish to quote the rather long message I am replying to; if you want
it, it should be in the references line.
I just wanted to note that Compuserve does not prosecute, nor do they have
standing to prosecute, any body who downloads a few things and places those
things on their own bulletin board. They will prosecute somebody who
claims to have everything that Compuserve has. By downloading all, or
substantially all, of a given set of Compuserve files, and then announcing
the contents of their BBS as such, they are deriving benefit from
Compuserve's work in collecting & advertising their collection.
Also, I think there are a number of specific agreements with Compuserve which
allow collective downloading--I believe that Netwire is done that way.
On a note about BIX use of Usenet, I have been trying to talk the BIX
people into a connection for years. They've always considered the
major difficulty was contacting each poster for his/her permission to
use his/her posting on BIX. (They take implied copyright seriously.)
Note that any cross-feed back from BIX would also require such permission.
The BIX agreement doesn't give them permission to publish your words on
Usenet. (It does, however, contain specific clauses allowing them to use
your words on BIX and in Byte magazine.)
--
Craig Jackson
{harvard,mit-eddie,ll-xn,axiom}!drilex!{dricej,dricejb}mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) (02/20/89)
In article <7725@chinet.chi.il.us> patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) writes: > >I will not comment on Our Good Work. But I will point out that CompuServe >has behaved in an arrogant manner on several occassions; and they have >committed acts which some attornies might consider illegal. They have >received numerous public domain software programs from their subscribers, >given to them in good faith, and used their compilation-copyright to >effectively remove the program from circulation *outside their system* >for good. Ask a few BBS sysops who have had the 'audacity' to download >a public domain program from CIS and put it on their free, public service >BBS for their users what happened to them. They got cease and desist >letters from an attorney for CIS. > [The folllowing is not a comment on whether or not the above is a true or false allegation.] This is an example of why I think we should question closely what constitutes a "compilation copyright." If someone (anyone) is simply collecting individual items and spitting them back out as a bundle, have they given "sufficient creative input" to that compilation to deny use and re-distribution of what was intended (in good faith) to be public domain materials? What happens if public domain program X gets compiled into bundle Y, but also is distributed by originator of X in other manners, I'd like to see the "compiler's" attorneys prove that a user had no other way of getting program X. Remember the originator has the right to allow anyone to obtain or use a copy (especially if, as has been posed, the originator's copyright is implicit by law, even when not explicitly stated). What if if I have obtained program X out of bundle Y, and the originator of the program has said "go ahead, use and distribute it"??? Think about it. We really need to consider what the limitations are (and should be) on "compilation copyrights." --Mark Gresham "Distribution and replication of the contents of this posting may not be restricted or prohibited in any way by any moderator, compiler, or electronic information service incorporating it into any other body of works." (So there! Pfffptt!!!) +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Mark Gresham ARTSNET Atlanta, GA, USA E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) (02/20/89)
In article <559@marob.MASA.COM> rogol@marob.masa.com (Fred Buck) writes: >Unix people have had similar things to say about the IBM >personal computers, and they're right in this insofar as the IBM personal >computers don't have an, ahem, operating system comparable to Unix. Damn, Fred, here I am under the mistaken assumption that I have System V Unix with a large kernal running on my Packard Bell AT286. Must be my imagination. :-) But then, I've never really taken much part in the infamous "Hardware Wars." Basically self-taught, I began learning on a Commodore 64 simply because it was there, and stopped only when it decided to self-destruct (Oh what a video show that was! :-)) I turned to IBM-PCs because they were available along with the software (and so was I to learn/do volunteer work) and I taught myself assembly language (not knowing I wasn't supposed to do that). Just over a year ago, I was introduced to Unix (once again, because it was there and so was I), and golly gosh, here I am a system admin. Funny thing, life. Had I followed other musicians/composers, I might have been led down the Mac road, but I took the route of least advertising; otherwise, I'd not have found Unix or Usenet. I'm certainly better off for it, in my estimation. --Mark Gresham "DOS all, folks!" +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Mark Gresham ARTSNET Atlanta, GA, USA E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
karl@dinosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (02/20/89)
mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) writes: [Paraphrased: `Does spitting back out a repackaging of a bunch of contributed items constitute "sufficient creative input" to justify compilation copyright?'] "Creative input" is not a criterion for establishment of compilation copyright. Value added is. The large commercial "information services" base their compilation copyrights on that idea - they provide the means by which to get at their particular pile of info. What happens if public domain program X gets compiled into bundle Y, but also is distributed by originator of X in other manners, I'd like to see the "compiler's" attorneys prove that a user had no other way of getting program X. Remember the originator has the right to allow anyone to obtain or use a copy (especially if, as has been posed, the originator's copyright is implicit by law, even when not explicitly stated). What if if I have obtained program X out of bundle Y, and the originator of the program has said "go ahead, use and distribute it"??? Think about it. We really need to consider what the limitations are (and should be) on "compilation copyrights." You're chasing shadows. The people who are supposed to worry about what the limitations should be and are, as regards compilation copyright, have already done so. For the specific example cited, note CompuServe's publicly stated position on the matter. This is excerpted from the copyright information which CompuServe publishes to its subscribers: |--IF I UPLOAD A SOFTWARE PROGRAM I'VE DEVELOPED TO COMPUSERVE, DO I STILL |RETAIN OWNERSHIP OF THE PROGRAM? | | Yes, you do. CompuServe's compilation copyright does NOT supersede |individual ownership rights or copyrights to any of the material furnished to |the Service by subscribers or information providers. | For example, a subscriber who creates a program and uploads it to a |CompuServe forum data library STILL OWNS that program, and may upload it to |other information services and bulletin board systems. | It should be noted, however, that CompuServe cannot grant any |redistribution rights for materials copyrighted by the author, unless |specifically authorized to do so, CompuServe does not own the material or the |copyright. These rights must be obtained directly from the author. The issue, then, is whether a BBS operator is downloading an occasional file for re-upload to his/her BBS, or whether s/he is strip-mining CompuServe for wholesale BBS redistribution. CompuServe doesn't care about the former, and would probably(?) pursue action in the latter. If this is still such a burning issue for everyone, I can post the whole copyright notice. I doubt CompuServe would mind :-). --Karl
rogol@marob.MASA.COM (Fred Buck) (02/20/89)
In article <559@marob.MASA.COM> I wrote: >Unix people have had similar things to say about the IBM >personal computers, and they're right in this insofar as the IBM personal >computers don't have an, ahem, operating system comparable to Unix. In article <110@artsnet.UUCP> mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) writes: >Damn, Fred, here I am under the mistaken assumption that I have >System V Unix with a large kernal running on my Packard Bell AT286. >Must be my imagination. :-) I expressed myself poorly. I meant to convey that the IBM machines as marketed by IBM, which is to say with MSDOS, are not comparable to Unix-based systems. Obviously 80286 and 80308-based machines are capable of running small Unix installations satisfactorily. My point was, and remains, that it serves nobody to thumb the nose or make rude gestures at someone else merely because the someone else uses a different sort of hardware or software, or patronizes this or that host system. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred Buck { uunet, rutgers }!hombre!marob!rogol { uunet, rutgers }!hombre!magpie!lemur!rogol { uunet, rutgers }!rogol@marob.masa.com Compuserve: 73327,3604 Sysop, Tangent Forum (GO TANGENT) ------------------------------------------------------------------
mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) (02/22/89)
In article <KARL.89Feb19221552@dinosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu> karl@dinosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) writes: >mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) writes: > [Paraphrased: `Does spitting back out a repackaging of a bunch of > contributed items constitute "sufficient creative input" to justify > compilation copyright?'] > >"Creative input" is not a criterion for establishment of compilation >copyright. Value added is. The large commercial "information >services" base their compilation copyrights on that idea - they >provide the means by which to get at their particular pile of info. > You mean that a bookseller could claim compilation copyright because he provides the means by which to get to that particular pile of books? :-) Interesting idea. [Karl, as I've mentioned before, I have no problem with CompuServe chargings their clients for the means of access to a body of public domain works.] I think I should clarify that I get "significant creative input" is the music and literary fields (the compilation of r.h.f. being one of literary issue); I wouldn't doubt that a different term with small adjustments of meaning would be used with software. The point of both terms is: "Did you really do anything significant with the stuff you compiled that justifies claiming intellectual property rights?" My beef is not with whether or not CompuServe's claim is ultimately valid, or whether or not Brad's claim is ultimately valid. But rather that there is an unwillingness all around to spell out the essentials of compilation, and what about those things justify claiming intellectual property rights. So far, the answers that appear are essentially: "I worked very hard." "I just know in my heart I can claim copyright." and "We let people get stuff." +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Mark Gresham ARTSNET Atlanta, GA, USA E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++