gnu@hoptoad.UUCP (03/21/87)
[Bear with me, there's an actual proposal at the end.] "The Stargate Project" (i.e. Lauren) had to decide a few years ago whether they wanted to be a post office or a magazine, a phone company or a radio station, e.g. whether they wanted to just carry information for other people, or to organize and "own" and be liable for their information. For some reason, still a mystery to me, he chose the magazine/radio station/ ownership route, even when the lawyer hired by Usenix said that this was the route with worse legal liability. Meanwhile, Stargate has continued to be promoted as a cheaper, better way to do Usenet -- a next generation information network for the folks who currently have Usenet. It is *not* that, and it hasn't intended to be that since the above decision was made. To today's "The Stargate Project", we users are both a source of free information, and a market to sell that information to. We all happily create information, send it to them, they sell it to their subscribers (us) and coerce us into not passing it on for free like we've been doing for years. This is all great except they are charging us both ways -- for phone calls to the stargate hub to post things, and for receiving the info coming back down. And they sit in the middle and control it. I was a strong supporter of the idea that sending the Usenet traffic up and down once could be cheaper than sending it all over the place at phone company rates. That is still probably true. "The Stargate Project" doesn't seem to be doing that though, so I no longer support it. Now, for legal aspects. I'm not a lawyer but I try to keep up with information law. If something is distributed to the public without a copyright notice, it is still owned by the author but they could never collect damages on it in court, so it's effectively public domain. Everyone has the right to use, copy, and redistribute public domain information. Everyone also has the right to choose to not exercise their rights. "The Stargate Project" can sign a contract with its customers, in which Stargate agrees to provide them information and the customer agrees to never use his right to redistribute public domain information received via Stargate. It sounds like this is one approach they are considering. In addition, if "The Stargate Project" actually generates any information, they can copyright it and control it that way in addition to whatever contracts they sign with recipients. Currently, virtually all the information in the Usenet is effectively public domain (as defined above), except occasional source postings containing copyrights. HOWEVER, it is trivial to copyright your postings and at that point "The Stargate Project" no longer has the right to redistribute it -- that right is controlled by you, the author. You can be very arbitrary in who you let do what. As far as I know, use of copyright to enforce a public right to redistribute (as in the copyrights on GNU Emacs and on several peoples postings, including this one) has not been tested in court, but I am willing to finance such a test if someone thinks they can violate the information owners' wishes with impunity. Contact me if your GNU-like copyright has been violated. IF they could distribute your material, they could control what their recipients do with it (with the contract) but you can cut them off before they can even distribute it. If enough people do this, they have to think again about how to make their business survive. Maybe they'll think all the way back to "how about making Usenet both cheaper and higher bandwidth by carrying it as a common carrier". THAT is the point of putting copyright notices in your .signature. (While you are at it, you could remove the disclaimer. They aren't funny any more and there is no need for them. Tim Maroney originated the first Usenet disclaimer while being hassled by the college he has since escaped from. If your management is not hassling you about postings, you don't need it, and the "official" presumption [read mod.announce.newusers] is that you are speaking for yourself.) In article <759@looking.UUCP>, brad@looking.UUCP writes: > It seems perfectly fair that Stargate and the LA customer could enter into > a contract that says, > "I will move the information you request from Atlanta to you, so long as > you pay me and don't resell (or give away) this moving." > Perhaps some are suggesting that this sort of contract be illegal... No, I am suggesting that this kind of contract is not in the best interest of all the people in the Usenet, and we should therefore not make our information available to vultures who operate under those rules. Put another way, why should Stargate restrict distribution on data moved from Atlanta to LA, when gatech and ihnp4 and sdcrdcf and hoptoad and decwrl move it and don't restrict it? Now, the whole backbone could desert to 'encourage' us to sign up for Stargate, but if the FCC doesn't manage to kill PC Pursuit, we can set up another backbone in short order. > If you wish to make such a contract illegal, you will seriously hurt > the economies of such telecommunications. Nobody here is talking about passing laws, which is the only way to make things illegal. > Any customer for telecommunications > of PD information will have to be charged enough to pay for telecommunications > to EVERYBODY in their nearby region. This would wreck the industry. I thought the original idea of Stargate was that indeed, once you have paid to move it to anybody, you *have* paid to move it to everybody. That if we chipped in together the way we've been doing moving it all around on phone lines, we could get better service for cheaper. It doesn't cost "The Stargate Project" any more to supply the information to a million sites than it does to supply it to ten sites. What costs more is all the administrative bullshit required to make all million of them pay for it. The original goals of the project have gotten lost in the accounting. If "The Stargate Project" said "we are now beginning transmission of the entire unedited Usenet feed, here is where you can buy decoders, pass it on like you do now, please send us 1/10th of the money you save on phone bills, honor system" would it survive or not? I don't know, but I prefer that experiment (which is what I thought we were doing here) to a "BYTE magazine of the airwaves", with Mark Horton as Jerry Pournelle, Lauren Weinstein as Steve Ciarcia, and remember, all you BIX subscribers, we charge you to log in and then we sell your words... -- (C) Copyr 1987 John Gilmore; you can redistribute only if your recipients can. (This is an effort to bend Stargate to work with Usenet, not against it.) {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4,ucbvax}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@ingres.berkeley.edu
fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) (03/23/87)
There are two kinds of big beasts in communication law: broadcasters (e.g. commercial radio & TV stations) and common carriers (e.g. the Telephone Company). Broadcasters are legally liable for the material that they broadcast (i.e. libelous utterances, copyrighted material, and stuff determined to be "offensive to the standards of the community"). Common carriers are not legally liable for anything they carry. The USENIX Association commissioned legal research into the question: What is USENET in the eyes of communication law? The answer was presented by Susan Nycum of Bartlett, Ely, Gaston & Snow at the Dallas USENIX Conference in January 1985. In essence, the answer is that USENET is unprecedented in the law, and so we don't know. Right now, we sit in legal limbo land, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The question at the crux of John Gilmore's posting is Can Stargate qualify for common carrier status under the law, and therefore not be liable for the content of the information that they carry? USENET uses common carriers to achieve the effect of a broadcaster, but Stargate is real live satellite broadcast, hitting the entire continental U.S. from a point 22,000 miles up, so Lauren Weinstein (doubtless in consultation with others) decided early on that Stargate was a broadcaster under the law, and therefore subject to the legal restrictions that broadcasters operate under. Which resulted in the statement, from nearly day one of the project, that Stargate would only be able to carry USENET's moderated groups (or material from the umoderated groups that got passed through a Stargate moderator). So what we really end up with is How can we change Stargate so that it can qualify for common carrier status under the law? The answer to this question may be that it is not possible, or that we'd have to change Stargate too much to be useful to us. However, that question is one for a lawyer, which I'm not. Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu
dricej@drilex.UUCP (03/25/87)
One feature, I belive, which distinguishes common carriers is that they
exercise *no* editorial control over what they carry. In most communities,
the phone company is legally bound to offer you a phone; once you have one,
the phone company has no say in what you say over it.
This is actually a rather special status granted by law. Most of us are
responsible for what we pass on to others.
As always: I'm not a lawyer; these opinions are worth less than what they cost
you.
--
Craig Jackson
UUCP: {harvard!axiom,linus!axiom,ll-xn}!drilex!dricej
BIX: cjacksonzhahai@gaia.UUCP (03/26/87)
I am glad to see that this discussion is slowly resolving some points (I hope)
and defining others.
One key issue is why Stargate would need to impose restrictions on its
subscribers redistribution of information. The answer seems to be that
the technology is expensive and somebody has to pay. It seems strange
that the other telecommunications companies can "move the information from
A to B" without such restrictions - if Stargate cannot it would seem to
be more and not less expensive (even if the expenses are distributed
differently).
Suppose I have a site which spends $1000 per month on receiving news (plus
more on sending, but thats another subject). Can Stargate deliver the same
service for $900 or less? Or can they do so only if they get another $500
from sublicenses, for a total of $1400? If they can do it for $900 (or less)
they don't need to restrict it. If they need a total of $1400 then they are
wasting money, in effect acting as a bill collecter by reducing my costs some
but raising other's costs more than enough to make up for it. A cute scam,
vaguely related to a pyrimid scheme, but they should be clear if that were
the case that they were providing bill collecting+telecommunications for
(in this example) $400 more than their communications only competition.
In the arbitrary example I give above, I would do better to continue using
current telecommunications services at $1000 and have a private agreement
to ask those I feed for a total of $200. They save, I save, and the most
cost efficient telecomm service gets our business.
Note that if the sites I feed have their own phone bills of $1000 (total for
all of them), they would still have that bill on top of anything discussed
above - if any site had a bill greater than what Stargate would charge them
they could get it direct.
If on the other hand, Stargate can provide the same service as a modem or
packet network for less money, they could be a boon. In which case, they
should stop this nonsense about restricting redistribution (other than of
their own created work, of course).
I am concerned about a possible scam, wherein they really sell a more
expensive service but it "seems" cheaper to some sites. I certainly
hope this is an unneccessary concern. If they would lay their cards on
the table it would help a lot - can they move information from one local
calling area to another cheaper than their competition, assuming that the
information will be freely distributed thereafter, or not?
I will not put a copyright and prohibition on this, as I hope all that
silliness can be dispensed with. I will begin if something is amiss.
By the way, it is not inconsistant to prohibit information movers from
using an article if they attach restrictions to it. Yes, it is a restriction,
but it is placed by the intellectual author and originator to prohibit
others from usurping the information by attaching further restrictions.
The phrasing may need work, but the concept is valid and consistent.
(It would be self-contradictory if the author prohibited any restriction
of any sort even by him/herself).
Cheers, ~z~
--
Zhahai Stewart
{hao | nbires}!gaia!zhahaihenry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (04/05/87)
> "The Stargate Project" (i.e. Lauren) had to decide a few years ago > whether they wanted to be a post office or a magazine, a phone company > or a radio station, e.g. whether they wanted to just carry information > for other people, or to organize and "own" and be liable for their > information. > > For some reason, still a mystery to me, he chose the magazine/radio station/ > ownership route, even when the lawyer hired by Usenix said that this > was the route with worse legal liability... [Caveat: I have no official affiliation with Stargate, although I believe what follows approximately reflects their views.] The problem is that Lauren/etc. did not "decide" to go this route; they were forced into it. You cannot become a common carrier or a broadcaster by saying that you are one; you become one by acting like one. If you are the manager of a radio station and you start broadcasting 24-hour porn, you cannot defend yourself against the Feds by declaring yourself a common carrier; the courts will say you are a broadcaster and are responsible for what you broadcast. The problem with Stargate is that nobody knows whether it is a common carrier or a broadcaster. Like Usenet, as the Usenix lawyer said, it is a gray area where there is no law and no precedent sufficient to settle the matter. This means that there is a significant probability that legal action would find Stargate to be a broadcaster, responsible for content. Since Stargate is intended as a useful service which must try to avoid expensive litigation -- not a legal test case which deliberately tries to provoke it -- it has to assume the worst, i.e. that it *will* be held responsible for what it transmits. The other side of this is that a serious lawsuit would probably destroy a small outfit like Stargate regardless of who was in the right. Again, the objective is a service, not a test case. So Stargate must act in such a manner as to reduce the probability of lawsuits, by being careful what it transmits. > Meanwhile, Stargate has continued to be promoted as a cheaper, better > way to do Usenet -- a next generation information network for the > folks who currently have Usenet. It is *not* that... I don't think anyone who gets news long-distance will dispute the "cheaper" part. As for "better", to me and many others that means, in particular, "more selective about content". I am not entirely happy with some of the things Stargate is doing, but I don't see the great betrayal. ... Now, the whole backbone > could desert to 'encourage' us to sign up for Stargate, but if the FCC > doesn't manage to kill PC Pursuit, we can set up another backbone in > short order. If I weren't unhappy about the chaos that the transition would cause for fun groups like rec.arts.comics, I would seriously suggest that the backbone take a six-month vacation and let you try. If it worked, we'd be off the hook permanently (HOORAY!), and if it didn't, it would be educational for you and others. > It doesn't cost "The Stargate Project" any more to supply the information > to a million sites than it does to supply it to ten sites... Any identifiable central point that isn't careful about what it sends can have costs of infinity, i.e. bankruptcy caused by lawsuits. > The original goals of the project have gotten lost in the accounting. Lauren has been saying "high quality, selective transmission, moderation, legal responsibility" all along. When did these "original goals" come up? > If "The Stargate Project" said "we are now beginning transmission of > the entire unedited Usenet feed, here is where you can buy decoders, > pass it on like you do now, please send us 1/10th of the money you save > on phone bills, honor system" would it survive or not? Probably not. My understanding is that such "shareware" honor-system arrangements are increasingly financial failures even in areas like software production where there aren't major ongoing expenses. (Remember that Stargate will *not* be getting its vertical-interval time free forever.) Have you priced libel/liability insurance for the venture you suggest? (Actually, I suspect the insurers' reaction would be "forget it".) > I don't know, > but I prefer that experiment (which is what I thought we were doing > here) to a "BYTE magazine of the airwaves"... John, have you ever priced vertical-interval time? Lauren is not running an "experiment"; he is trying to build something useful out of a unique opportunity -- a satellite uplink company that is interested in the idea and is willing to give us a big break. If you remember Lauren's original description, he was hoping for cheap/free vertical-interval time from one of the religious broadcasters or somebody along those lines. That idea had to be abandoned; even the religious broadcasters and PBS know that every dollar they get from selling VI time is a dollar they don't have to get from donors. He was very lucky that Southern Satellite was taken with the idea, and we are not out of the woods yet by any means. This is a unique chance, one we dare not blow on a "great experiment", given that our current network is most unlikely to survive another five years of expansion. -- "We must choose: the stars or Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology the dust. Which shall it be?" {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry