jsol@bu-cs.UUCP (03/11/87)
I didn't want my message to sound so hostile. I am against stargate because of the limitations and cost. Netnews was always a "free" resource, at least to its end users. Free implies unlimited distribtion. Stargate will elminaite that. If Stargate is willing to allow the netnews newsgroups it carries to be distributed freely, and restrict other services to those who pay for it, I would see that as reasonable. As I mentionned in my previous message, the ARPA people would be upset if postings from the ARPANET to netnews were being used to make money. WTBS is clearly a for-profit organization, whether or not Stargate is is probably of no concern to DARPA. The reason Stargate must charge so much is precisely because WTBS wants to make money on this. Another point is, the cost of Stargate is higher than our current cost of getting news (well, we have this internet connection, but even by phone both Harvard and MIT-EDDIE have been good sources for news and they are both local calls). Are you saying that we aren't paying our "fair share" and that we *should* sign up for Stargate just because it has our favorite newsgroups and nobody else will deliver them because Stargate is restricting them? This is really unreasonable. Hopefully this is a more thought out article. I'm sorry if my previous article offended anyone. Cheers, --jsol
shap@sfsup.UUCP (03/13/87)
StarGate has a problem, which is finance. They will have a bigger problem copyrighting the material they send. This is easily defeated simply by inserting the note: Copyright (c) 19xx Your Name You then have an open and shut legal case against them copyrighting your material. The problem here is that StarGate is attempting to provide a distribution service for material they don't own. They can make me pay for the distribution, but the authors of the material can probably sue the daylights out of them if they try to take over the material (note: *can*, not *will*). I gather that it is largely because of facts such as these that stargate is limiting the content of its transmissions. Note that since StarGate cannot own the material, they cannot restrict its redistribution in any meaningful way. They can say in their contract: "You can't send it on if you get it from us," but if I in my posting say it is public domain they haven't a legal leg to stand on. If the material author copyrights with a free to redistribute for non-commercial purposes or via StarGate (note special case), similar arguments apply. In short, the authors need not be concerned about the impact of StarGate on the distribution of their meanderings. There are established legal solutions to these problems. CAVEAT I am not a lawyer. Other people will no doubt have much to say about the above, but I believe it to be accurate in essence if not entirely correct.