stargate@Stargate.COM (03/16/87)
First, please allow us to straighten out this confusion about WTBS once and for all. Neither WTBS nor Turner Broadcasting have any control over, influence on, or financial interest in Stargate or SIS. The data signal that makes up part of the vertical interval of WTBS is, from a regulatory standpoint, not even part of the WTBS signal. The vertical interval is controlled soley by the independent company which uplinks the WTBS signal to the satellite. Like any other carrier, including AT&T, MCI, Sprint, etc., they want to make money from their resources, and rightly so. As it turns out, since the unique nature of SIS has been appreciated by the satellite carrier since the early stages of the experimental project, we have been offered quite favorable and special rates--under more "normal" rate structures the amount of satellite bandwidth we are using would be prohibitely expensive and we'd never have gotten off the ground. Nobody is getting rich off of SIS--not the carrier and certainly not us! Everyone who is a part of SIS is working on a volunteer basis. Fees and charges have been established that will balance out-of-pocket expenses; there are no salaries included in those equations. We like to think that SOMEDAY there will be some money to pay for some of the time we put in on this project--we're all professionals who could be out actually making money doing other things with that part of our time we devote to working on Stargate for free! But we consider Stargate to be important so we don't have any expectations of Stargate salaries of any sort for quite some time. As we've stated in the past, we want to be reasonable about pass-through of information transmitted via Stargate. But there really is no free lunch! Even the shoestring budget we're dealing with now must be met, or there ain't no satellite and there's nothing for *anyone* to receive! We appreciate that not everyone has the financial or technical resources to subscribe to the Stargate satellite feed. We want to help such people wherever possible. But there are fundamental economic realities to even a low-budget operation like this that must be considered. There will be different classes of information on Stargate--some locally generated, some sorted and filtered by our own people, etc. The compilation work that results has value to the subscribers. In any case, we're working on formulas for "non-satellite" Stargate subscribers. We do want to be fair and we do want to help. Part of the purpose of this experimental period is to allow us to home in on the best way of handling these complex sorts of issues. Sincerely, The Stargate Team
yerazuws@rpics.RPI.EDU (Crah) (03/17/87)
In article <103@stargate.UUCP>, stargate@Stargate.COM writes: > As we've stated in the past, we want to be reasonable about pass-through > of information transmitted via Stargate. But there really is no free > lunch! > [...] But there are fundamental economic realities to > even a low-budget operation like this that must be considered. I fully appreciate that you *must* pay for your resources, but you are ignoring a very important point- I (not Stargate) am the author of my postings. Some of these postings are (at least) mildly useful to others. I have no objection to you redistributing my postings- BUT YOU SHALL NOT CLAIM ANY EXCLUSIVITY OR OTHER RESTRICTION ON THEM. I haven't entered into any authorship/publishing arrangement with you, and I'll thank you not to claim my work as yours. Or else I'll see you in court. Now, if SIS wishes to provide new and original information, they may do so. They may originate, copyright, and restrict redistribution on that which they have created, and I'll applaud them and probably even purchase their service, if it looks reasonable. They can also act as a "fixed-cost" newsfeed, distributing public domain material. You pay for the delivery service, not the information itself. Or you can buy either level of service, depending on what you want at your site. But to take something that I (or someone not contracted to SIS) wrote and placed in the public domain (or even copyrighted and public domainized a la GNU manefesto), and attempt to restrict redistribution of said public domain material and derivative works of public domain material, is (1) very legally shakey, and (2) liable to get themselves into a LOT of hot water if someone decides to press the point. SIS may not have very deep pockets financially but WTBS, the satellite owners, etc. certainly have deep pockets. They might be sueable even though they aren't legally in the "chain of command", simply because you were using their facilities, they knew what you were doing, and they didn't stop you. After thinking about it, it's not reasonable for me to single out Stargate as a culprit, hence note the updated .signature . I really *do* hope Stargate works. I just don't want them (or anyone else) stealing any intellectual property. Remember, my .signature file doesn't say you can't send it over Stargate, it just says Stargate can't keep you from sending it to someone else, too. -- -Bill Yerazunis "VAXstation Repo Man" -->Copyright (c) 1987. Restrictions on Redistribution PROHIBITED <--
metzger@tom.columbia.edu (Perry Metzger) (03/17/87)
In article <998@rpics.RPI.EDU> yerazuws@rpics.RPI.EDU (Crah) writes: >In article <103@stargate.UUCP>, stargate@Stargate.COM writes: >> As we've stated in the past, we want to be reasonable about pass-through >> of information transmitted via Stargate. But there really is no free >> lunch! >I fully appreciate that you *must* pay for your resources, but you are >ignoring a very important point- > I (not Stargate) am the author of my postings. Some of these > postings are (at least) mildly useful to others. I have no > objection to you redistributing my postings- BUT YOU SHALL NOT > CLAIM ANY EXCLUSIVITY OR OTHER RESTRICTION ON THEM. I haven't > entered into any authorship/publishing arrangement with you, and > I'll thank you not to claim my work as yours. ... >I really *do* hope Stargate works. I just don't want them (or anyone >else) stealing any intellectual property. > >Remember, my .signature file doesn't say you can't send it over Stargate, >it just says Stargate can't keep you from sending it to >someone else, too. First of all, although collections of public domain articles can be copyrighted as a derivative work, they cannot claim the part that is sent over the rest of the net if it is sent without any proprietary stargate information. Why? Because the information has appeared elsewhere, and you cant copyright a public domain work (at least not successfully) only derivatives of public domain works. Also, if you copyright your net articles in the manner described, they cannot be redistributed in a restricted manner by stargate as a copyright entitles you to rights in derivative works as well. Personally, I do not want the precedent of a restricted set of stargate copyrighted information around. Although stargate may be benevolent, it may inspire more draconian operations, and even if its intentions are good it is still restricting the flow of network information. Thus the notice on the bottom of this message. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer; what I say may be subtly flawed. Perry Metzger Copyright 1987 by Perry Metzger. Restrictions on Redistribution PROOO
zhahai@gaia.UUCP (03/17/87)
Dear Stargate Team:
It seems that you might reduce the divisiveness of your proposed
copyrighting or restriction of formerly public material by stating just
what processing you intend to add to the public material (as opposed to
simply transmission) in order to assume copyright.
If your "copyright on the compilation" concept is basically just
like current moderated groups (some of which basically filter out redundancies,
mispostings, and irrelevant material, put a list of titles on the front, and
post as a digest) then I personally would feel "ripped off". I sometimes
spend a significant time trying to explain some subject, for example the
intricacies of the IBM EGA, with no compensation. I have greatly appreciated
all of the other good will based labor that others have put into their
postings. I sometimes spend time attempting to post a useful and reasonable
response somewhat as a "payback" for the information I have received. This
dynamic depends on mutual (though not universal) good will.
I personally do not want to have the content and expression which I
have created and freely given "usurped" by the mere duplication of my title
(on someone else's title) at the front of a "digest". You might or might not
succeed in legally defending such a ploy, but it is morally reprehensible.
On the other hand, if someone wants to read my postings, along with
those of others perhaps, digest and understand them, and write a book from
the knowledge gained, I have no objections whatever. I would be pleased in
most cases, and certainly would not contect their legal or moral right to
copywrite their own creation based on information and ideas from me (and
others).
Where within this spectrum do you intend to play your game? Are you
going to attempt a major rip-off of the intellectual labor of others, or are
you really going to only restrict new material created explicitly created
for or by Stargate? You have been too vague so far. This makes for
confused responses by the "troops". If you will restrict yourself to the
latter I will wish you well and see how I might support your efforts (within
my limited resources). If you are going to try to "steal" my efforts by
imposing commercial restrictions, then my check will be in the mail to the
first group willing to take you to court. We may be friends or enemies -
you have left things too vague. I suspect there are others of like mind.
By the way, I do not accuse you of attempting to "get rich". I
realize that you are attempting to pay for the neccessary costs of using
this new technology rather than (just) personally enrich yourselves. But
that makes little difference - I don't support moral theft even for the
"good cause" of expanding the usage of expensive but fun technology.
Yes, I realize that nothing is "free", and that this network
exists through the generosity of many sites that pay the commercial
costs of maintaining it. If you can offer better transmission services
than the phone companies, or packet switchers, etc - I wish you the best
of luck. But those folks don't try to assert ownership of my efforts,
nor attach permanent restrictions on further redistribution.
Part of what I am trying to get across is that you are free to
distribute anything I post as long as you don't try to restrict anyone
else from freely distributing it. If you cannot pay your bills without
such a restriction, then I think your project, fun as it might be, should
wait until the technology has matured and become sufficiently inexpensive
to compete without intellectual theft. If you can survive by offering
distribution which is cheaper than that offered by existing services which
do not limit further distribution, than the time is ripe and you should
go for it.
The other part is that I do not want to be quoted in any "compilation"
which you intend to copyright. You are free to use any ideas I release to
the public domain, and create indices and commentaries which REFER to
things I have posted on the net, and copyright those indices, etc as you see
fit (as YOUR intellectual creations and properties). But if the main reason
that somebody would care to read mod.whatever is the content and expression
that I and other authors have created, rather than for the title list,
then your attempt to restrict further distribution would be moral theft,
whatever the legal shield your might erect and defend. I will take legal
and practical steps to attempt to thwart same; in the end I would stop
posting anything of substance if that were the only way to stop such
theft. (I doubt it though; I suspect that legally a copyright with
limitations on the ability of anyone else to quote within a restricted
distribution compilation would be sufficient to defeat such connivery).
Anyway, I just wanted to lay the cards on the table; I hope that
all this is unneccessary and you will be "playing fair". I would be
glad to be proven wrong about my fears and to become a "booster". But
I think you would do well to reassure the net about your intentions if
so - dark hints about your ability to copyright "compilations" of
public domain works (legally true) only serve to suggest that you MAY
be intending to use legal connivery to effectively make off with the
good will based efforts of others <true, the money would go to the
Satelite industry rather than yourselves, at least at first, but it
is the restrictions not the money I object to>.
Good luck (I think). Let us know where you stand. ~z~
Sample: Copyright 1987 Zhahai Stewart; this article may not be included in
any compilation or formulation which restricts further distribution; otherwise
it may be freely distributed and quoted. Let's hope this will not be
neccessary.
--
Zhahai Stewart
{hao | nbires}!gaia!zhahaimontnaro@sprite.steinmetz (Skip Montanaro) (03/17/87)
I'm not sure just what the big problem is here. On the one hand we have a bunch of people who want to read the news in a cost effective timely fashion. (That includes me and many other people in my organization.) On the other hand are some people (Lauren Weinstein, Mark Horton, Steve Morenberg, and others) who are trying to make that happen. There are, as Lauren pointed out, financial realities to the Stargate situation that cannot be ignored. In the current setup, many sites may be paying very little for their news feed. Some disk space, a modem, and a local telephone call or two per night. Others of us, in order to get a timely feed from something approximating a backbone site, have to pay a small fortune in phone bills because of long distance calls. For us, Stargate offers a potentially more cost-effective way to get the news. It is unlikely that the Stargate folks will be able to hold a sword to your neck to prevent you from redistributing whatever you receive from them. Once it funnels into your local news database, it is unlikely that Stargate-transmitted messages will look much different from phone-trans- mitted messages (perhaps an extra header field?). That will make it a practical difficulty to prevent redistribution over phone lines. The situation is similar from a sender's standpoint. Considering just the moderated newsgroups, it is the moderator's responsibility to decide whether to post an article to a newsgroup. The moderators may have no choice but to not post those articles which are marked "RESTRICTED: do not distribute via Stargate". I don't want to ramble on without suggesting a possible way out of this mess. Bear in mind that what I propose is just an idea, not anything that I've given a great deal of thought to. What I suggest is that those sites which receive the Stargate feed (we will be one of them), feed other sites on the condition that they pay some fraction of their receiver's subscription fee to Stargate, sort of an "associate membership", and that it is a recursive membership. For instance, steinmetz (ge-crd) will be paying $900 for a six month trial subscription. Let's assume the associate membership fee is 30% of the feed's membership. Using this scheme, any sites that we feed would pay $900 X 30% = $270 for the right to get the Stargate-fed groups. If they in turn feed the Stargate groups to other sites, they would in turn require the recipients to sign up to the tune of $270 X 30% = $81, and so on. This somewhat crude proposal does not address a number of issues: 1. What if a site gets phone-feeds from more than one Stargate member or associate member? What price should that associate member be charged, the max or the min? 2. What if an associate member site receives some, but not all, of the Stargate-distributed groups? How do you charge? Based upon historical volume or simply by taking a fraction: (groups received) / (total Stargate groups)? 3. At what level do you terminate the recursion? How do you ascertain compliance? You don't! Just like non-copy-protected software, Stargate would have to trust its members and associate members to be honest. Now, it can add wording to the subscription contract that would require this (or some other) associate membership relationship to be constructed, but Stargate doesn't have, and probably never will have, the peoplepower to investigate "violators". Do not interpret anything I've said in this message as representing any organization but myself. Most certainly, these are not the opinions of General Electric. Comments? Skip - (Free for redistribution by any means, including Stargate!) ARPA: montanaro%desdemona.tcpip@ge-crd.arpa UUCP: seismo!rochester!steinmetz!desdemona!montanaro GE DECnet: csbvax::mrgate!montanaro@desdemona@smtp@tcpgateway
shor@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Melinda Shore) (03/17/87)
[] It's not as if this business of the company copyrighting the data it transmits (without regard for origin) is without precedent. About three years ago, OCLC, a mojo humungo bibliographic utility, announced that it was copyrighting all records added to its database after a certain date. OCLC creates none of these records itself -- most are created by the Library of Congress, and the rest are created by member libraries who are charged a fee for entering these records into the database. Presumably, this was to discourage competing utilities from building up their databases with records that were first entered into OCLC, and to discourage libraries from downloading records to local machines for searching so that they wouldn't have to pay to search the OCLC database. There was quite a bit of noise about it, but as far as I know OCLC has never taken anyone to court for copyright violation. I've been out of libraries for three years so I don't know what the net effect has been, but I'd say there are some strong parallels between what OCLC did and the proposed copyright of articles transmitted via Stargate. -- Melinda Shore ..!hao!oddjob!sphinx!shor University of Chicago Computation Center shor@sphinx.uchicago.edu
heiby@mcdchg.UUCP (Ron Heiby) (03/18/87)
In article <4470@columbia.UUCP> metzger@tom.columbia.edu.UUCP (Perry Metzger) writes: >Copyright 1987 by Perry Metzger. Restrictions on Redistribution PROHIBITED >In article <998@rpics.RPI.EDU> yerazuws@rpics.RPI.EDU (Crah) writes: >-->Copyright (c) 1987. Restrictions on Redistribution PROHIBITED <-- It seems to me that the two referenced articles are in danger of being caught in a temporal vortex or something. They are attempting to restrict the redistribution of themselves to allow only unrestricted distribution. However, since they themselves are restricting their own distribution, they are self-violating. I think the authors of the two articles should go sue themselves. :-) Copyright 1987 by Ronald W. Heiby, Redistribution to lay people impersonating laywers is just too bad. P.S. The three character sequence "(c)" has no legal standing whatsoever. P.P.S. I don't see how SIS can think they can restrict distribution of articles originating on Usenet. Digests of them, maybe. But, not the original public domain articles. -- Ron Heiby, mcdchg!heiby Moderator: mod.newprod & mod.os.unix Motorola Microcomputer Division (MCD), Schaumburg, IL "Save your energy. Save yourselves. Avoid the planet 'cuae2' at all costs!"
shap@sfsup.UUCP (03/19/87)
In article <1290@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>, shor@sphinx.UUCP writes: > ... About > three years ago, OCLC, a mojo humungo bibliographic utility, announced > that it was copyrighting all records added to its database after a > certain date. Are you sure they copyrighted the entries, and not the compendium? Also, I believe that OCLC adds a respectable amount of informatoin to each reference, and consequently may be in a position to claim that the reference is a derived work. StarGate can certainly copyright derived works, but only if the relevant copyright legislation isn't violated.
joe@auspyr.UUCP (Joe Angelo) (03/19/87)
> What I suggest is that those sites which receive the Stargate feed (we will > be one of them), feed other sites on the condition that they pay some > fraction of their receiver's subscription fee to Stargate, sort of an This is an interesting idea from the view point of Stargate Customers -- they can slice thier price into a customer-group instead of *A* customer. So, if siteA feeds 5 sites (siteB - siteF), and siteB - siteF feed 5 sites each, then we have 800$ being paid collectively by 31 sites (or whatever). Gee, that means Stargate doesn't collect 30 * 800$!!. Even a non-profit business would find that hard to digest (well -- what do I know). Now, what may be needed is a ''Second-party subscription fee'' were second hand sites pay a considerably smaller fee than the first hand site; Stargate could even allow first hand sites to charge second hand sites a shipping fee. This would even work well for a second hand site that gets feeds from two or more Stargate sites (why they would want to do that, i dunno!). Like I said, what do I know!? -- "No matter Joe Angelo, Sr. Sys. Engineer @ Austec, Inc., San Jose, CA. where you go, ARPA: aussjo!joe@lll-tis-b.arpa PHONE: [408] 279-5533 there you UUCP: {sdencore,necntc,cbosgd,amdahl,ptsfa,dana}!aussjo!joe are ..." UUCP: {styx,imagen,dlb,gould,sci,altnet}!auspyr!joe
yerazuws@rpics.RPI.EDU (Crah) (03/19/87)
> > Skip > - > (Free for redistribution by any means, including Stargate!) > ARPA: montanaro%desdemona.tcpip@ge-crd.arpa > UUCP: seismo!rochester!steinmetz!desdemona!montanaro > GE DECnet: csbvax::mrgate!montanaro@desdemona@smtp@tcpgateway That's fine with me. As long as the redistribution is free and unencumbered, I have no objection. In other words, change "any" to "all" and you have my vote. (btw- there is a Strange Loop in my .signature file - who noticed that "prohibiting restrictions" is self-referential and self-denying? ) -- -Bill Yerazunis "VAXstation Repo Man" -->Copyright (c) 1987. Restrictions on Redistribution PROHIBITED <--
shor@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Melinda Shore) (03/19/87)
In article <1224@sfsup.UUCP> shap@sfsup.UUCP writes: >Are you sure they copyrighted the entries, and not the compendium? Also, I >believe that OCLC adds a respectable amount of informatoin to each >reference, and consequently may be in a position to claim that the >reference is a derived work. StarGate can certainly copyright derived >works, but only if the relevant copyright legislation isn't violated. OCLC copyrighted the individual records. Here's a question for you legal types -- when a library enters a record into the database, they assign MARC tags and subfield indicators, which are entered as text. OCLC stores the records in MARC format, which is basically a directory with pointers to field beginnings. Does converting the text into this format constitute sufficient alteration to the data for it to be considered a derived work (esp. since the library gave the instructions for the conversion by adding field tags)? This is rather far afield from Stargate, so mail to me. -- Melinda Shore ..!hao!oddjob!sphinx!shor University of Chicago Computation Center shor@sphinx.uchicago.edu
schaefer@bgsuvax.UUCP (03/20/87)
Could a lawyer reading this group please comment on redistribution restrictions? I understand, of course, that such an opinion might be worth exactly what I paid for it. Even more valuable would be the opinion of the lawyer to the Stargate folks. As a subscriber to Stargate, that would be an opinion for which my University would have paid, in some sense. I'm personally a little disappointed that our subscription money might have to be spent on a lawyer instead of on providing service, but that's life in the free world. Clearly, I defer to the judgement of the Stargate Team as to whether retaining a lawyer is necessary. I am asking only out of personal curiosity. I will tentatively state the position of BGSU on this issue: We will subscribe to Stargate. We will continue to participate in USENET. We will follow the legal restrictions on redistribution - which I trust will be clearly LEGAL restrictions. For the purposes of USENET, BGSU is effectively a leaf node. I do not foresee that any article will fail to be distributed as usual because of our participation in Stargate. (-: Just think - if Stargate carried paid advertising, they'd be BEGGING us to redistribute! :-) (-: Anyone who can't read a smiley face will be flamed. :-) -- Stephen P. Schaefer Systems Programmer schaefer@research1.bgsu.edu ...!cbatt!osu-eddie!bgsuvax!schaefer
cball@ishmael.UUCP (03/20/87)
Dear Stargate Team: I am confused about several facets of this discussion and would appreciate clarification. My understanding of the situation suggests that the available bandwidth has sufficent capacity to easily handle all of netnews and that by doing so, even the experimental rates would lower costs for the vast majority of sites on the net. First of all, the stargate service operates at 2400 baud. This translates to a raw transmission capacity of roughly 20 Mbytes/day. I believe that our site is receiving about 3 Mbytes/day of netnews. Even allowing for transmission overhead and duplicate transmissions and it would seem that you have sufficient bandwith for all of news. What is the rational for restricting it? Second, your experimental rates are $150/month. This is less than our typical telephone bill. Our site receives news from one site and feeds it to another. Calls to either site are local (1 message unit) calls and cost $.0926 for each 5 minutes. The same $150 stargate charges buys us 1620 message units/month which translates to an average of 4.4 hours/day. This is clearly less than the 24 hour/day transmission capability which you offer. Furthermore, 4.4 hours gives us a cost equivalent raw transmission bandwidth of 3.7 Mbytes at 2400 baud or 1.8 Mbytes at 1200 baud. Rates vary, but it seems that the only sites which would save money by not using stargate are those using pre-existing leased lines. Third, the current direction of stargate, to limit the topics transmitted to moderated groups and "worthwhile" others, is the source of many problems being hashed and re-hashed. Restricting the data makes the data transmitted relatively more precious(in dollars/Mbyte) and creates the incentive to redistribute it via dialup lines. To the extent that this policy is followed, it appears (to me) that stargate is throwing out its primary asset. To the extent that my understanding is correct, it seems that by including all of netnews, you would create a purely economic incentive for sites to subscribe. The utilization of as much filler(netnews if you will) as is available simply increases the incentive to subscribe, particularly since folks like and want it. Since it would be more expensive to exchange news via any dialup line, it would not be necessary to attempt to limit transmission from subscribers to other sites. In fact, dialup transmissions between uucp neighbors could be the approved way to get back data. This would eliminate the need for duplicate transmissions and increasing the effective bandwidth. It seems to me that the time to start filtering is when the service matures and bandwith limitations are reached. This policy would help you establish a large, appreciative, customer base which would support the additional value added services you have stated an interest in developing. Charles Ball
ron@brl-sem.UUCP (03/21/87)
In article <103@stargate.UUCP>, stargate@Stargate.COM writes: > > Sincerely, > > The Stargate Team I would feel better about this if someone would put their name on these anonymous postings. If you are not going to identify a the "team," at least come up with a person to act as spokesman. -Ron
jsol@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jon Solomon) (03/23/87)
I agree with everybody out there who is complaining that Stargate must not copyright what is printed in USENET. After much communication with the Stargate team I am happy to say that they are NOT going to copyright anything that is already in the public domain (such as netnews). If they wish to add services to their system that are outside of USENET's domain, then they are bound by whatever contracts they make with those entities. Now realistically, using current technology, you are either a Stargate subscriber or you aren't. If you subscribe then you pay the fees and get the necessary equipment. All is fine. If you aren't a subscriber then you continue to receive netnews the same way you always have. If some site deicdes to start using stargate exclusive, you can't do anything about it. You certainly can't complain to the Stargate Team about it, they didn't make the decision. I think if you want to receive Stargate transmissions over your uucp channel that you consent to pay part of the cost that the site which is receiving stargate is paying. THIS IS STILL BETWEEN YOU AND THAT SITE. NOT WITH STARGATE. USENET has *ALWAYS* been a fluctuating network. News paths have been fleeting since the beginning of time. Stargate won't change that. If ihnp4 decided to stop sending news altogether you would still have to find someone else to get your news from. Again, after much conversation with the Stargate Team, I find that Stargate is a different entity from usenet. Usenet will continue (as it has since its inception) to operate as long as their is sufficient interest in keeping it running. If we at BU start receiving Stargate, we won't stop MIT from getting our USENET feed (but NOT our Stargate feed unless they pay), just like it has since we first started receiving netnews. Anyway, I think that sums up what is being argued. --jsol
dave@lsuc.UUCP (03/23/87)
In article <129100001@ishmael> cball@ishmael.UUCP writes: >Rates vary, but it seems that the only sites which would save money by not >using stargate are those using pre-existing leased lines. This assumption is incorrect. In many locations, phone lines are paid at a flat rate and local calls are free. Areas served by Bell Canada are one such jurisdiction. Once a single Toronto site has paid to bring netnews to Toronto, it is distributed through the city at no further variable cost. David Sherman The Law Society of Upper Canada Toronto -- { seismo!mnetor cbosgd!utgpu watmath decvax!utcsri ihnp4!utzoo } !lsuc!dave
df@nud.UUCP (03/24/87)
In article <5626@bu-cs.BU.EDU> jsol@buita.UUCP (Jon Solomon) writes: >If some site deicdes to start using stargate exclusive, you can't do >anything about it. You certainly can't complain to the Stargate Team >about it, they didn't make the decision. I think if you want to receive >Stargate transmissions over your uucp channel that you consent to pay >part of the cost that the site which is receiving stargate is paying. >THIS IS STILL BETWEEN YOU AND THAT SITE. NOT WITH STARGATE. Continuing, if "that site" decides that you pay nothing, that's ok, since THIS IS STILL BETWEEN YOU AND THAT SITE. NOT WITH STARGATE. -Dale
mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (03/29/87)
In article <5626@bu-cs.BU.EDU>, jsol@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jon Solomon) writes: > USENET has *ALWAYS* been a fluctuating network. [...] > If ihnp4 decided to stop sending news altogether Haven't they? :-) > If we at BU start receiving Stargate, we won't stop MIT from getting > our USENET feed (but NOT our Stargate feed unless they pay), just > like it has since we first started receiving netnews. Except that there will be groups, mod.sources say, which will be coming in both via normal USEnet mechanisms *and* via Stargate. The way things seem to be going, you'll be allowed to send on only those articles that came in over the phone. This is counter to the way USEnet has always worked, and were I netnews admin at BU, I would find this unacceptable. der Mouse Smart mailers: mouse@mcgill-vision.uucp USA: {ihnp4,decvax,akgua,utzoo,etc}!utcsri!musocs!mcgill-vision!mouse think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse ARPAnet: think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse@harvard.harvard.edu
apc@cblpe.UUCP (04/06/87)
In article <716@mcgill-vision.UUCP> mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) writes: > >> If we at BU start receiving Stargate, we won't stop MIT from getting >> our USENET feed (but NOT our Stargate feed unless they pay), just >> like it has since we first started receiving netnews. > >Except that there will be groups, mod.sources say, which will be coming >in both via normal USEnet mechanisms *and* via Stargate. The way >things seem to be going, you'll be allowed to send on only those >articles that came in over the phone. This is counter to the way >USEnet has always worked, and were I netnews admin at BU, I would find >this unacceptable. I would assume that stargate (like iran-gate?) would do "it" "right". They would supply sg.mod.sources, and a list of what mod.sources articles are included, and the following "recomended" organizational software: Two article trees are maintained, sg and phone. Whenever you read news, your (sg supplied) rn will give you articles from sg/* first, and then any articles in phone/* that you have not read in sg/*. Any site can then forward phone/*. Now where the (next) problem comes up is: I just read sg.jokes and I want to post a flame to jokes.d Since I am not sg, I can only post to phone.jokes.d but I (being a good netizen) include the significant (likely small) portion of the original article, but it is copywronged, what will I do? (I know, but is it legal. No, but will I get "in trouble"?) SG will therefore make replying to articles a REAL pain! I would have to wait until the phone copy of the article came in to reply to it, but by then I could forget what I wanted to say ( I am soo very old..) -- "Are you sure you won't change your mind?" | Alan P. Curtis "Why? Is there something wrong with the one I have?"| AT&T,BTL,CB -----------------------------------------------------| cbosgd!cbsnsz!apc "Remember: The leading edge is the bleeding edge" | ihnp4!cbsnsz!apc Copyright (c) 1987. Inclusion in copyrighted material prohibited.