kristoff@GENBANK.BIO.NET (Dave Kristofferson) (03/07/90)
I have had two queries in the last few days from people at commercial companies who were wondering if it was O.K. for them to post job advertisements on the EMPLOYMENT/BIO-JOBS/bionet.jobs newsgroup. To the best of my knowledge, these types of postings are NOT allowed, i.e., the taxpayers should not be subsidizing free advertising for expenses that should legitimately be borne by businesses. The only written regulations that I have regarding this issue are the regulations governing the use of our regional branch of NSFnet (called BARRNet) which explicitly prohibits this type of posting. All users of the GenBank On-line Service are required to read and abide by these rules as part of the agreement in getting an account on our computer system. It is my understanding from conversations with others that the use of BITNET/EARN for this purpose is also a violation of regulations. I am not sure what regulations are in force for JANET in the U.K. (perhaps someone there can comment), but if the prohibition also exists there then all segments of BIOSCI are covered except for those sites that receive the bulletins via USENET. I do not think that USENET users are inhibited by this regulation as long as the USENET connection is going over private phone lines. In a nutshell, if you are at a commercial company and have a job to post, you should probably look at your agreement that grants you network access. You will probably find right there that the action is prohibited. If not, then you may technically be able to get away with the posting, e.g. on USENET, and have it "leak" into the academic networks through the BIOSCI USENET to Internet distribution feature. Although this may not be against the rules technically (official comments, anyone?) it definitely violates the spirit of the law. Frankly, since I know from firsthand experience that getting a job is one of most people's primary concerns in the biological sciences, I think that most grad students/ postdocs would welcome these postings, and I personally find these restrictions a bit irksome. Nonetheless, it is also understandable that those who can afford to pay for a service should not take back door routes to exploit government subsidized resources. I shall add a reply-to line to this message so that replies to this message are returned to the newsgroup instead of to me. I will try to solicit opinions from some other network authorities who are involved in drafting these regulations. Sincerely, Dave Kristofferson GenBank On-line Service Manager kristoff@genbank.bio.net