emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (06/19/91)
in the near future, postings to comp.archives are going to be tagged with an explicit copyright notice. [*] this is a step in the direction of making this service fully self-supporting, with enough resources readily available to the project so that I can afford to keep it going. as i posted in an article to comp.archives a few months ago, unless my work on this starts to yield some results, i'm going to stop distributing my efforts far and wide for free. free distribution of comp.archives is currently expected to continue to the end of the year; if things haven't worked their way out to my satisfaction, i expect to step down from moderating comp.archives some time not too long after the winter Usenix meeting. no specific dates set yet. there are several very good reasons to stick a copyright notice of some kind on the materials which i have collected and organized for on the order of 18 months now. first and foremost, comp.archives needs some better publicity and name recognition. it's somewhat embarrassing to have people still asking how it's produced, that there's some sense that it's magic or just automatic processing that's going on. explicit copyrights will start to clue people in on just what it is they are looking at -- a production not only of some technology but also of considerable human creative input. explicit assertion of copyright will assist me in gaining cooperation from resource providers who might be interested in producing services which were derived from my efforts. these might be on-line searchable databases, services which offered direct hands-off delivery of successful searches by anonymous ftp or uucp transfer, caches of information dynamically updated from comp.archives postings, or paper or cd-rom products that would incorporate materials derived from comp.archives. in addition, it will enable my work to be properly credited by other researchers who are working on the "resource discovery" problem; rather than them simply saying "we searched through netnews for interesting stuff and found a lot of it, so our search stuff must be pretty good", i would expect proper credit and attribution and recognition of the substantial progress made thus far. i expect that in the same timeframe that postings to comp.archives will also be cross-posted to a new group, with the tentative name "msen.internet.archives". MSEN, Inc. will be the publisher of materials in the msen.* hierarchy; I expect to be doing this for the benefit of our operations and that of our customers and strategic partners, and these groups will be fed in accordance with that policy. I have developed a considerable amount of expertise in this area, and expect to populate the msen.* hierarchy with interesting, insightful, and consistently high quality information. Some people who really enjoy reading comp.archives right be cut off from it for some amount of time. I'm content for that to happen; for my own needs, I can do all of the filtering and searching and sorting on netnews and just hoard that knowlege all to myself. It would be much easier to do that rather than spend the extra time adding all of the extra information, verifying that thigs are really there, editing down really long posting etc. That's where too much time is spent right now, and where support from people using that information is going to help me assess whether it's worthwhile continuing. If you are currently building any services based on comp.archives (other than strictly personal use), please contact me and let me know what your plans are so that we can assure their continued viability on into 1992. if you considered building such services and rejected the notion, let me know what the limitations of the current data stream are and what you would like to see in the future. MSEN Inc., if it ever gets sufficiently successful to actually pay any of its current employees instead of draining their own personal bank accounts :-(, will be looking for skilled people to fill a position of Internet Archivist. (Save your resumes, at the current rate of progress it's a ways off.) So far as I can tell, none of the commercial internet providers as of yet have anyone filling this role; Cerfnet and ANS has nothing along this line, UUNET's generic title is "postmaster", and everyone at PSI is working on X.500. It would make me quite happy if when we finally got to the point of hiring for this position, all of the good people had been snapped up; not too likely as far as I can tell. I would also be happy to pursue joint development work with archivists to develop dictionaries or other classifiction schema and to further the state of the art in searching and text retrieval systems. I ran across an estimate that it costs all told $200 to put together a single complete Library of Congress card catalog entry. If you look at the sustained production of about a dozen entries daily in comp.archives and value it at this at this rate, that's an estimate of the potential value of this project at about $750,000 to $1M per year. I believe that MSEN could deliver this service extremely well with that sort of a budget, that it would be money well spent, and that it would be best for everyone involved if the end product wasn't burdened by any nasty copyright nonsense. Unfortunately, the current "Interim MSEN" plans don't have a large pile of money falling out of the sky, and the realities of doing this much work for nothing are starting to catch up on me. I hope very much that things will work out well, and if they don't, well it's been fun. -- Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. emv@msen.com "With all of the attention and publicity focused on gigabit networks, not much notice has been given to small and largely unfunded research efforts which are studying innovative approaches for dealing with technical issues within the constraints of economic science." RFC 1216 [*] Pointers to materials available under the GNU Public License will of course be freely redistributable; MSEN will not assert any copyright or place any restrictions over their redistribution, and I'll continue to try to track GNU project announcements even if I give up free distribution of everything else.
wilker@gauss.math.purdue.edu (Clarence Wilkerson) (06/19/91)
Ed, I have certainly appreciated your efforts. As an avid net news reader and source collector, I am constantly amazed by the volume of material available to those who have the energy and time to sift. Your service is of great value to us. I particularly like the verification of the location, directories, and size of the archived material. There's nothing as frustrating as not being able to find the advertised material. I don't know what kind of luck you'll have breaking even on this, but good luck. Clarence Wilkerson
ryan@ra.cs.umb.edu (Daniel R. Guilderson) (06/20/91)
I too am very appreciative of emv's work on comp.archives but I have to question the direction he has chosen to take comp.archives. I think he may be able to make some money with it but I think the USENET community would be better off if the work is decentralized. I think we should be discussing ways which we could distribute the work load as widely as possible so that noone person is overly burdened. For example, whenever we find ourselves posting the location and/or availability of an item of information or software, it would be nice if there was a single newsgroup with an agreed upon article format which one could post that info to. It would be bad manners to carry on discussion in the designated newsgroup. That's just one idea. Maybe it will work, maybe not, but I think it is a better idea than having one person or one company sifting through megabytes of crap to find a few gems.
gtoal@tardis.computer-science.edinburgh.ac.uk (06/20/91)
In article <EMV.91Jun19020107@bronte.aa.ox.com> emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes: >if they don't, well it's been fun. So long, Ed. It was nice knowing you.
cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) (06/20/91)
In article <EMV.91Jun19020107@bronte.aa.ox.com> emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes: >in the near future, postings to comp.archives are going to be tagged >with an explicit copyright notice. [*] this is a step in the direction of >making this service fully self-supporting, with enough resources >readily available to the project so that I can afford to keep it >going. I certainly hope you are able to obtain resources for the project so it can keep going as a freely available service. If not, you are of course perfectly entitled either to stop providing the service, or to provide it privately under whatever contractual terms you choose. It is indeed a valuable service and nobody should expect it to be available without compensation to the producer. However I strongly urge you to obtain legal advice (and related business advice, and more feedback within Usenet) before adding any copyright notice. I suspect it would stir up more hostility and expressions of ingratitude within Usenet than any corresponding benefit that might be obtained from making the service look more attractive to potential funders/investors. That of course is something you can judge for yourself better than me, but please take this as friendly feedback. On the legal side, my understanding is that the copyright notice would not be worth anything (though probably also not worth anybody's while to challenge). Essentially what you are doing is "cataloging" rather than "compilation". For various policy reasons the skill and labor applied to cataloging is not protected by copyright (i.e. it is specifically excluded from copyright legislation) and instead a system of publicly funded cataloging has been established. That is not something you can judge for yourself, nor can you rely on my unqualified advice - it is a matter on which you would need legal opinion. A privately contracted service can be operated without protection of copyright, although there are obvious difficulties which copyright overcomes. The existence of those difficulties, and the worthiness of the project that seeks to overcome them, does not however create the legal conditions for a compilation copyright. Although it is irrelevant, I would add that in my opinion the policy in favour of publicly funded cataloging rather than copyrighted cataloging is a sound one, and indeed almost a necessity given the nature of cataloging. Look to the library system for support and funding. I believe it is not only authorized, but legally obliged to provide the cataloging needed. (Depositing some "published" archives with them might bring the issue to a head, since the LC might reasonably claim that they can't catalog stuff which isn't deposited with them as publishers are legally required to do.) -- Opinions disclaimed (Authoritative answer from opinion server) Header reply address wrong. Use cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au
ruck@reef.cis.ufl.edu (John Ruckstuhl) (06/21/91)
In article <RYAN.91Jun19141831@ra.cs.umb.edu> ryan@ra.cs.umb.edu (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes: >we should be discussing ways which we could distribute the work load >as widely as possible so that noone person is overly burdened. For >example, whenever we find ourselves posting the location and/or >availability of an item of information or software, it would be nice >if there was a single newsgroup with an agreed upon article format >which one could post that info to. It would be bad manners to carry >on discussion in the designated newsgroup. That's just one idea. >Maybe it will work, maybe not, but I think it is a better idea than >having one person or one company sifting through megabytes of crap to >find a few gems. I prefer a cooperation between N assistant-moderators, who lurk/contribute across the span of newsgroups. It would be the responsibility of these persons to clip articles which point to archives, and mail them (including original Message-ID) to the master-moderator. The master-moderator would post the clippings, taking care not to post duplicates. Master-moderator could be automatic. I volunteer, effective immediately, to forward clippings from comp.sys.3b1 comp.sources.3b1 to the current moderator of comp.archives. I accept the responsibility of finding a replacement if I decide to no longer read these newsgroups. (I will cease this assistance if (i) someone points out how foolishly I have overlooked something, or (ii) emv asks me to quit polluting his mailbox) Best Regards, ruck -- John R Ruckstuhl, Jr ruck@alpha.ee.ufl.edu Dept of Electrical Engineering ruck@cis.ufl.edu, uflorida!ruck University of Florida
wolfgang@wsrcc.com (Wolfgang S. Rupprecht) (06/21/91)
emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes: >in the near future, postings to comp.archives are going to be tagged >with an explicit copyright notice. this is a step in the direction of >making this service fully self-supporting, with enough resources >readily available to the project so that I can afford to keep it >going. I am very appreciative of the fact that you, and many others, put in considerable amounts of free labor to make the various source archives work. However, I find this new twist of copyrighting other people's works, and then selling them *extremely* disturbing. I suspect that one immediate reaction to your scheme will be that you will see many more packages posted with a gnu-like "copyleft". -wolfgang -- Wolfgang Rupprecht wolfgang@wsrcc.com (or) uunet!wsrcc!wolfgang Snail Mail Address: Box 6524, Alexandria, VA 22306-0524
adam@soda.berkeley.edu (Adam J. Richter) (06/21/91)
In article <EMV.91Jun19020107@bronte.aa.ox.com> emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes: >in the near future, postings to comp.archives are going to be tagged >with an explicit copyright notice. this is a step in the direction of >making this service fully self-supporting, with enough resources >readily available to the project so that I can afford to keep it >going. as i posted in an article to comp.archives a few months ago, >unless my work on this starts to yield some results, i'm going to stop >distributing my efforts far and wide for free. free distribution of >comp.archives is currently expected to continue to the end of the >year; if things haven't worked their way out to my satisfaction, i >expect to step down from moderating comp.archives some time not too >long after the winter Usenix meeting. no specific dates set yet. If you want to produce a copyrighted newsgroup, then please don't use a newsgroup in a hierarchy that is normally propogated over NSFNet and BARRNet, which prohibit most forms of commercial usage. Such a blatant and willful violation of the Interim NSFNet Acceptable Use Policy, apparently with the complete knowledge and sanction of your company, is unprecedented in the history of the NSFNet, to the best of my knowledge. I don't know if the folks at NSF could do more than threaten to disconnect sites that transmit comp.archives over NSFNet, or if you could be prosecuted for whatever laws exist to make it illegal to make unauthorized use of other people's computer equipement (such as the NSFNet backbone), or, for that matter, if the law is any different when the computers that you are misusing are owned by the federal government. I suspect that what would happen would be that comp.archives would simply not be carried on NSFNet. This is not to say that copyrighted newsgroups are a bad thing, but that they should be transmitted by permission of those who carry them. You might want to try your scheme on the biz.* hierarcy or do something in conjunction with ClariNet, or make some other arrangement so that the intermediary sites that carry your copyrighted newsgroup to your cusomters could recover the costs that they bear from your commercial use of their resources. I doubt that you can actually copyright other people's postings without their consent any more than I can scratch out a copyright notice on a book and replace it with my own. I wonder if you'd be in violation of any laws regarding copyright and fraud. I wonder if you and your company could be sued by the original authors of the postings or by anybody else who was effected by your copyright notices. In summary, please keep your scheme, which is of dubious legality, out of the comp.* hierarchy. Adam J. Richter adam@soda.berkeley.edu 409 Evelyn Avenue, Apt. 312 ....!ucbvax!soda!adam Albany, CA 94706 Home: (415)528-3209
emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (06/21/91)
In article <13748@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> wilker@gauss.math.purdue.edu (Clarence Wilkerson) writes:
I particularly like the verification of the location, directories,
and size of the archived material. There's nothing as frustrating
as not being able to find the advertised material.
Thanks Clarence. As you know I've been doing this stuff for almost 7
years now starting from when I was collecting ms-dos software on
um.cc.umich.edu; so far the track record at getting support for the
efforts has not been all that good. My part-time position as
organizer of the collection was un-filled for most of a year after I
moved on to another job; it took something short of an angry mob at
the door of the Computer Center to fill the position. (That
collection is still active at msdos.archive.umich.edu now days, a
little gray around the edges in spots, but still going.)
One of the things which will distinguish between the MSEN Archive
Service and what I'll eventually be posting to comp.archives is that
comp.archives postings won't have the verified locations and sizes in
them any more. Identifying and double-checking these takes time and
effort, which slows down the process substantially. I'm hoping that
something can be worked out such that the verificationn information
will still be posted to the comp.archives group (just not by me!) in
separate postings; some standard data formats would help, and it would
be an opportunity to run something like "archie" searches to see just
how many old stale copies there are out there that need to be updated.
I guess that brings up the point -- it's about time that the community
get more involved in the continued care and feeding of comp.archives
(the free group), in ways that make it better for everyone. I'd
particularly like to work out some kind of feedback mechanism where
comments about the programs get fed back more closely to the community
here. For instance, if there were an RN macro or GNUS function that
you could invoke when you were reading comp.archives to signal that
you thought that the software or the description was exceptional (or
lousy), that information could be fed back to a collection point and
used as a first pass at a review. (Something like "arbitron" except
just for the one group.) Similarly, I'd like to see first-quality
original material posted to comp.archives, like reviews or surveys,
without the absolute necessity for a moderator to get in the way.
(i'd say "unmoderate it" except for the risk of it just being another
comp.sources.wanted....)
--
Edward Vielmetti, moderator, comp.archives, emv@msen.com
"(6) The Plan shall identify how agencies and departments can
collaborate to ... expand efforts to improve, document, and evaluate
unclassified public-domain software developed by federally-funded
researchers and other software, including federally-funded educational
and training software; "
"High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, S. 272"emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (06/21/91)
In article <RYAN.91Jun19141831@ra.cs.umb.edu> ryan@ra.cs.umb.edu (Daniel R. Guilderson) writes:
I think
we should be discussing ways which we could distribute the work load
as widely as possible so that noone person is overly burdened.
"burden" is perhaps too strong a word; I like what I'm doing.
Maybe it will work, maybe not, but I think it is a better idea than
having one person or one company sifting through megabytes of crap to
find a few gems.
Actually, it's kind of neat to be able to sift through 30 megabytes a
day and pick out 30K of useful information; unfortunately, it just
takes a little too long, because I haven't translated my knowlege
about what it is that makes up a "gem" posting into code yet. That's
one reason for going commercial on some part of it -- there is code
out there that I could buy or license right now which would make the
job easier. The market that's driving it is the financial market, all
of those people sitting watching the Dow Jones news wire and
triggering alerts for them to notice one hot topic or another; several
firms have reasonable systems. (The ones I know of off the top of my
head are Ful/Text from Fulcrum and Topic by Verity; no doubt there are
others.)
Think of it as part of the developmental evolution of news readers.
Instead of evaluating only the articles in each newsgroup, the modern
newsreader gets a "full feed" and looks at each article using criteria
which span multiple newsgroup boundaries. So you could easily look
for discussions that are going on in multiple places, or find people
and follow their postings no matter where they're posting them, or (as
we have now as a special case) find all of the new source posting
announcements. Everyone sifts through megabytes of crap to find a
few gems; it's time for that technology to be more widely available.
--
Edward Vielmetti, moderator, comp.archives, emv@msen.com
"(6) The Plan shall identify how agencies and departments can
collaborate to ... expand efforts to improve, document, and evaluate
unclassified public-domain software developed by federally-funded
researchers and other software, including federally-funded educational
and training software; "
"High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, S. 272"emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (06/21/91)
In article <29302@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> ruck@reef.cis.ufl.edu (John Ruckstuhl) writes:
(I will cease this assistance if (i) someone points out how foolishly I
have overlooked something, or (ii) emv asks me to quit polluting his
mailbox)
I'm taking you up on this, John, it'll take a little while to
coordinate the details. You should talk to the other 3b1 folks,
namely Dave Brierley <dave@galaxia.newport.ri.us>, to coordinate
affairs; it wouldn't be hard at all to have the "part 01 of nn"
articles in comp.sources.3b1 be quite suitable for comp.archives, and
just cross-post them right in.
As far as I can tell, comp.archives has done a pretty good job with
3b1 stuff -- I've been tagging stuff with "sys/3b1", and I managed to
snag that "XINU for the 3B1" out of obscurity (saw it reposted back again
to comp.sys.3b1 a few days later.
--
Edward Vielmetti, moderator, comp.archives, emv@msen.com
"(6) The Plan shall identify how agencies and departments can
collaborate to ... expand efforts to improve, document, and evaluate
unclassified public-domain software developed by federally-funded
researchers and other software, including federally-funded educational
and training software; "
"High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, S. 272"emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (06/21/91)
On the legal side, my understanding is that the copyright notice would not be worth anything (though probably also not worth anybody's while to challenge). Essentially what you are doing is "cataloging" rather than "compilation". The actual process is much more akin to compilation than to cataloging; I'm not just blindly reposting whatever it is that my search software presents to me, more like 10% of it. No doubt there's room for improvement on that score; still, given the amount of effort that I put in to decide what to post and what not to post falls within the realm of compilation as well as cataloging. I saved about 1000 rejects from over the course of a week's work, that should be adequate to argue the case. Although it is irrelevant, I would add that in my opinion the policy in favour of publicly funded cataloging rather than copyrighted cataloging is a sound one, and indeed almost a necessity given the nature of cataloging. Look to the library system for support and funding. I believe it is not only authorized, but legally obliged to provide the cataloging needed. I'm not aware of any libraries undertaking any massive software cataloging efforts, not on the scale of a dozen new entries or updates daily. I'd be perfectly happy if the opportunity came along to do this work and have the results be both high quality and freely available; can't say that there are any existing library models to go on that adequately suit the task. -- Edward Vielmetti, moderator, comp.archives, emv@msen.com "(6) The Plan shall identify how agencies and departments can collaborate to ... expand efforts to improve, document, and evaluate unclassified public-domain software developed by federally-funded researchers and other software, including federally-funded educational and training software; " "High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, S. 272"
emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (06/21/91)
In article <1991Jun21.074613.10883@agate.berkeley.edu> adam@soda.berkeley.edu (Adam J. Richter) writes:
If you want to produce a copyrighted newsgroup, then please don't
use a newsgroup in a hierarchy that is normally propogated over NSFNet and
BARRNet, which prohibit most forms of commercial usage. Such a blatant and
willful violation of the Interim NSFNet Acceptable Use Policy, apparently
with the complete knowledge and sanction of your company, is unprecedented
in the history of the NSFNet, to the best of my knowledge.
Your encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the NSFNet is most
welcomed. I trust that you are also reading the com-priv mailing
list, which deals with the commercialization and privatization of the
Internet; those archives are kept at uu.psi.com:/archives/com-priv/*
for your further entertainment.
I don't know if the folks at NSF could do more than threaten to
disconnect sites that transmit comp.archives over NSFNet, or if you
could be prosecuted for whatever laws exist to make it illegal to
make unauthorized use of other people's computer equipement (such
as the NSFNet backbone), or, for that matter, if the law is any
different when the computers that you are misusing are owned by the
federal government.
Your encyclopedic knowledge of the law is also highly regarded. I'd
recommend browsing through the Computer Underground Digest archives
that Brendan Kehoe maintains on ftp.cs.widener.edu:/pub/cud/, in
particular the "networks" and "law" directories there.
I suspect that what would happen would be that
comp.archives would simply not be carried on NSFNet.
Should that be a matter of concern to us, we would deal with it as the
matter arose.
This is not to say that copyrighted newsgroups are a bad thing,
but that they should be transmitted by permission of those who carry
them.
Absolutely. And people who are getting them shouldn't pass them along
to their neighbors unless their neighbors are properly authorized to
carry them, and they shouldn't be transmitted over networks which have
restrictive usage policies. At worst you might have to make long
distance phone calls direct back to the source of the information.
I doubt that you can actually copyright other people's postings
without their consent any more than I can scratch out a copyright notice
on a book and replace it with my own. I wonder if you'd be in violation
of any laws regarding copyright and fraud. I wonder if you and your
company could be sued by the original authors of the postings or by
anybody else who was effected by your copyright notices.
I agree that it is going to be important to keep things on the up and
up, and to pay attention to the intellectual property rights of
everyone involved. That's why it would be ideal if the work were
funded by some entity which wouldn't assert any additional rights over
the work, they'd just give it away for free.
Consider the following prospect. comp.archives continues on much as
it is today, except that articles don't have any additional
information added to them when I repost them, and I don't necessarily
go to all of the trouble of verifying location information. Other
comp.archives contributors add location information, snappy reviews,
indexes, directories, more keywords, etc etc etc. The total
information content of comp.archives is higher because more people are
working on it, and I work less hard at it than before.
A second, commercial service provides the same data to its customers,
plus adds value of its own to the materials and keeps the database of
information as a whole up to date. It retains enough of a copyright
on the whole pile of information that it has gathered and created to
ensure that it gets credit where credit is due, but allows individual
pieces of that collection to be distributed freely as long as the
source of the information was acknowleged. I.e. tag on an MSEN Seal
of Approval along with the verification information, so that people
know what they're getting and who verified it.
In summary, please keep your scheme, which is of dubious legality,
out of the comp.* hierarchy.
I'm a little bit miffed that you're so hostile. Would you prefer that
I dropped off the net entirely?
--
Edward Vielmetti, moderator, comp.archives emv@msen.com
"(6) The Plan shall identify how agencies and departments can
collaborate to ... expand efforts to improve, document, and evaluate
unclassified public-domain software developed by federally-funded
researchers and other software, including federally-funded educational
and training software; "
"High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, S. 272"dhesi@cirrus.com (Rahul Dhesi) (06/22/91)
In <1991Jun21.074613.10883@agate.berkeley.edu> adam@soda.berkeley.edu
(Adam J. Richter) writes:
"If you want to produce a copyrighted newsgroup, then please don't
use a newsgroup in a hierarchy that is normally [propagated] over
NSFNet and BARRNet, which prohibit most forms of commercial
usage."
I disagree. There is plenty of copyrighted software posted to the net
in the comp.* hierarchy, and nobody seems to mind. It is a wrong
assumption that imposing a copyright on a Usenet posting is
incompatible with NSFnet etc.
"...or if you could be prosecuted for whatever laws exist to make
it illegal to make unauthorized use of other people's computer
equipement (such as the NSFNet backbone)...."
The situation is actually quite symmetric. Just as the NSFnet backbone
could complain about unauthorized use of its hardware by somebody
posting to Usenet, somebody posting to Usenet could complain about the
NSFnet's unauthorized transportation, by copying, of a copyrighted
article...
...But Usenet wouldn't be Usenet without complaints.
Usenet is an anarchy. There are three basic corollaries to this.
a. Once you post something to Usenet, you are implicitly granting
permission to everybody on the net to transport and store that
posting.
b. Once your computer system becomes a part of Usenet, you are
implicitly granting permission to others to transmit their copyrighted
or non-copyrighted literary or non-literary works through your
equipment without being obliged to get your permission or pay you any
fee.
c. Those disagreeing with all this are free to express their opinions
on Usenet, and chances are they will, many times over.
--
Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@cirrus.COM>
UUCP: oliveb!cirrusl!dhesirsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) (06/22/91)
In <EMV.91Jun19020107@bronte.aa.ox.com> emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes
something like this:
I can no longer afford to do this for free, and I want more credit for
the work I do, so I am going to start limiting the distribution of
what I do. If I still don't get what I want, I'll quit.
Quit now, Ed.
/r$
--
Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net.
Use a domain-based address or give alternate paths, or you may lose out.appel@ocf.berkeley.edu (06/22/91)
In article <EMV.91Jun21060332@bronte.aa.ox.com> emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes: >I'm a little bit miffed that you're so hostile. Would you prefer that >I dropped off the net entirely? Adam is one of the most hostile and least useful people on the internet. Ignore him, like the entire Berkeley community does, and simply keep up the good work. Shannon
adam@soda.berkeley.edu (Adam J. Richter) (06/22/91)
In article <EMV.91Jun21060332@bronte.aa.ox.com> emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes: >Consider the following prospect. comp.archives continues on much as >it is today, except that articles don't have any additional >information added to them when I repost them, and I don't necessarily >go to all of the trouble of verifying location information. Other >comp.archives contributors add location information, snappy reviews, >indexes, directories, more keywords, etc etc etc. The total >information content of comp.archives is higher because more people are >working on it, and I work less hard at it than before. > >A second, commercial service provides the same data to its customers, >plus adds value of its own to the materials and keeps the database of >information as a whole up to date. It retains enough of a copyright >on the whole pile of information that it has gathered and created to >ensure that it gets credit where credit is due, but allows individual >pieces of that collection to be distributed freely as long as the >source of the information was acknowleged. I.e. tag on an MSEN Seal >of Approval along with the verification information, so that people >know what they're getting and who verified it. I like this solution (legal questions aside), assuming that the commercial service is carried on an explicitly commercial news hierarchy like biz.*, clarinet.*, or your proposed msen.*. As I've said before, I have nothing against copyrighted newsgroups. I just don't want them in the core news hierarchies (comp.*, sci.*,talk.*, etc.). I don't want site administrators to have to carefully track which individual newsgroups should or should not be transmitted across various networks or which newsgroups must not be distributed outside of a certain set of paying subscribers. Another reason why I don't want the comp.archives itself to become restricted is that there is no shortage of proposed ways to continue an unresticted comp.archives. Adam J. Richter adam@soda.berkeley.edu 409 Evelyn Avenue, Apt. 312 ....!ucbvax!soda!adam Albany, CA 94706 Home: (415)528-3209
oz@nexus.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) (06/24/91)
emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes: >in the near future, postings to comp.archives are going to be tagged >with an explicit copyright notice. I don't believe your position (within USENET context) as a moderator of a public newsgroup in a public network, re-posting public information [albeit after much effort] entitles you to a copyright on that information. I could be wrong, but since the comp.archives service can be re-created without any copyrights, it really does not matter. >this is a step in the direction of >making this service fully self-supporting, with enough resources >readily available to the project so that I can afford to keep it >going. as i posted in an article to comp.archives a few months ago, >unless my work on this starts to yield some results, i'm going to stop >distributing my efforts far and wide for free. free distribution of >comp.archives is currently expected to continue to the end of the >year; if things haven't worked their way out to my satisfaction, i >expect to step down from moderating comp.archives some time not too >long after the winter Usenix meeting. no specific dates set yet. I think creation of a spiffy super-archieve-information service may indeed be a much welcomed addition to the existing information services. I also think it is understood that this is an entirely seperate undertaking than the USENET newsgroup comp.archieves, which you just happen to moderate right now. I wish you luck in your future endevours, I hope a worthy and as dedicated a maintainer of comp.archives may be found after you step down. >Some people who really enjoy reading comp.archives right be cut off >from it for some amount of time. I'm content for that to happen; If I understand you correctly, I see no reason whatsoever for comp.archives to be cut off. A new moderator can ensure that the flow of information continues uninterrupted. There is nothing magical about comp.archives, it too continues to exist because its a part of USENET, and there is someone (or more) out there to do the work. oz --- Often it is means that justify ends: Goals | email: oz@nexus.yorku.ca advance technique and technique survives even | phone: 416-736-5257 x 33976 when goal structures crumble. -- A. J. Perlis | other: oz@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca
brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) (06/24/91)
oz@nexus.yorku.ca wrote: >>in the near future, postings to comp.archives are going to be tagged >>with an explicit copyright notice. > >I could be wrong, but since the comp.archives service can be >re-created without any copyrights, it really does not matter. I would wager that trying to re-create it would be far from trivial. Similar issues have come up before (rec.humor.funny, comp.compilers, etc) but they've been worked out, too. The actual information itself isn't copyrighted; rather, the way it's presented, stored, and accessed is covered (similar to a compilation copyright on a CD full of periodicals). -- Brendan Kehoe - Widener Sun Network Manager - brendan@cs.widener.edu Widener University in Chester, PA A Bloody Sun-Dec War Zone
hacker@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Thomas J. Hacker) (06/24/91)
In article <3635@litchi.bbn.com> rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes: >In <EMV.91Jun19020107@bronte.aa.ox.com> emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes >something like this: . . . >Quit now, Ed. > /r$ Get a life, Rich! (Sorry, I just felt like saying that...that's all I'll say!) -Tom -- Thomas Hacker "Criticism is something we can avoid easily - by saying Systems Programmer nothing, doing nothing, and begin nothing" - Aristotle Oakland University, Rochester Mich (313) 370-4358 hacker@vela.acs.oakland.edu HACKER@OAKLAND uunet!umich!vela!hacker
dhesi@cirrus.com (Rahul Dhesi) (06/25/91)
In <1991Jun24.001311.11155@newshub.ccs.yorku.ca> oz@nexus.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes: >I don't believe your position (within USENET context) as a moderator of a >public newsgroup in a public network, re-posting public information [albeit >after much effort] entitles you to a copyright on that information. Before everybody starts talking at cross-purposes, let's make sure what the term "public" means, at least in the USA. In phrases like "public school" and "public road", the term "public" means "government-funded" and/or "government-controlled." (Nobody has ever stopped me from transporting copyrighted material on a public highway or using it in a public school.) In phrases like "public place" when referring to, e.g., a restaurant, the term "public" means "privately owned but open to anybody who is willing to pay for service." (I occasionally read copyrighted material in a restaurant without invoking anybody's wrath. Even the menus are often copyrighted!) In phrases like "public place" when referring to, e.g., a city or state or national park, the term "public" means "government-controlled but open to everybody who can squeeze in." (I have never been stopped from reading of carrying copyrighted material in a park.) So think about which meaning of "public" is intended here. Then tell me why this meaning should prevent the posting of copyrighted information to the net. (We already have tons of copyrighted software posted.) -- Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@cirrus.COM> UUCP: oliveb!cirrusl!dhesi
oz@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) (06/25/91)
brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) writes: >I could be wrong, but since the comp.archives service can be >re-created without any copyrights, it really does not matter. I would wager that trying to re-create it would be far from trivial. I did not say it would be trivial, but that it can be done. There are a lot of individuals on USENET that do non-trivial things for the public good, and this is just one of those things. Similar issues have come up before (rec.humor.funny, comp.compilers, etc) but they've been worked out, too. Ah, they have? Here is what comp.compilers moderator has to say about this issue: | Unless there is specific language to the contrary, each message represents | only the personal opinion of its author. I claim no compilation copyright | on comp.compilers. As far as I am concerned, anyone can reproduce any | message for any purpose. Individual authors may retain rights to their | messages, although I will not knowingly post anything that does not permit | at least unlimited non-commercial distribution. If you find comp.compilers | useful in writing a book, producing a product, etc., I would appreciate an | acknowledgement of usenet and comp.compilers. Here is the tail end of an article from rec.humor.funny. I don't see any copyrights there. | Edited by Brad Templeton. MAIL your jokes (jokes ONLY) to funny@looking.ON.CA | | Please! No copyrighted stuff. Also no "mouse balls," dyslexic agnostics, | Iraqi driver's ed, Administratium, strings in bar or bell-ringer jokes. Yes, I am well aware that both of these moderators have published their compilations, and have claimed copyright as they should, but that is not what Edward is talking about, if I understood him correctly. ... The actual information itself isn't copyrighted; rather, the way it's presented, stored, and accessed is covered (similar to a compilation copyright on a CD full of periodicals). Are you talking about the contents of the newsgroup as it arrives to my machine, and is "stored" and "accessed" there? oz --- Often it is means that justify ends: Goals | email: oz@nexus.yorku.ca advance technique and technique survives even | phone: 416-736-5257 x 33976 when goal structures crumble. -- A. J. Perlis | other: oz@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca
jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala) (06/25/91)
In article <1991Jun24.175523.17435@cirrus.com>, dhesi@cirrus (Rahul Dhesi) writes: >So think about which meaning of "public" is intended here. Then tell >me why this meaning should prevent the posting of copyrighted >information to the net. (We already have tons of copyrighted software >posted.) How can 'information' be copyrighted ? I didn't think it could be copyrighted. The expression is covered by copyright, not the information. Also, according to the Berne convention (I think), mostly everything posted on the net is _already_ by default copyrighted by the author; that is, the author has the right to decide what happens to the article he has written. //Jyrki
oz@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) (06/25/91)
dhesi@cirrus.com (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
[rahul's conceptualizations of "public" elided]
...
So think about which meaning of "public" is intended here.
Thanks for your "public" descriptions Rahul, but they are not particularly
interesting to me. I actually did spend some time thinking about this and
other issues within the context of USENET, and co-wrote about it[1] in 1987.
At the time we examined the copyrighted re-destribution of "public" USENET
postings as a part of the Stargate affair, and the flap over it. So, however
fascinating it may be, the topic under discussion is not exactly uncharted
territory.
... Then tell
me why this meaning should prevent the posting of copyrighted
information to the net. (We already have tons of copyrighted software
posted.)
Maybe you misunderstood what I wrote. I am only objecting to the copyrighted
re-post of public (that is, it is available anyone who wants it without any
restrictions) information articles posted by others, while I acknowledge that
it takes some effort to do the selective re-post, as with any other moderated
newsgroup. My objection is mostly on the philosophical grounds, but you may
wish to get more technical, as many people did during the the Stargate affair.
They began copyrighting their articles to disallow Stargate's copyright and
its restrictions, but that was 1986/87. Now, there is no need to bother even
in the US, as per Geneva convention, all articles are implicitly copyright by
their authors. I think the implications of this for any "derivative works"
such as the article contents of comp.archives is reasonably clear.
oz
---
[1] Durlak J. and R. O'brien and O. Yigit, ``An Examination of the Social and
Political Processses of a Cooperative Computer/Communications Network Under
the Stress of Rapid Growth'', York University, 1987 (N/A)
---
In seeking the unattainable, simplicity | Internet: oz@nexus.yorku.ca
only gets in the way. -- Alan J. Perlis | Uucp: utai/utzoo!yunexus!ozemv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (06/26/91)
<excerpt> <msgid> OZ.91Jun25014110@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca </msgid>
oz@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:
Maybe you misunderstood what I wrote. I am only objecting to the
copyrighted re-post of public (that is, it is available anyone who
wants it without any restrictions) information articles posted by
others, while I acknowledge that it takes some effort to do the
selective re-post, as with any other moderated newsgroup.
</excerpt> <para>
Would your objections be the same if the copyright applied only to the
entire collection of information posted to comp.archives, and not to
individual messages? That is to say, no matter how someone got an
MSEN Archive Service posting announcing a new version of the Scheme
bibliography, they'd be able to share that with their friends so long
as they didn't give a full feed of msen.* to someone who didn't
subscribe. This could probably be taken care of strictly with
contracts, but copyright notices serve an equivalent effect.
</para> <para>
Actually, I'd even let them (or encourage them!) to send out a full
feed of the original articles that made up the MSEN Archive Service,
sans copyright, verification, editing, ? advertising ?, keywords, see-also
information, References: lines that point back to the original
announcements, and perhaps with a few of the articles that I rejected
tossed in for good measure.
</para> <excerpt>
My objection is mostly on the philosophical grounds, but you may
wish to get more technical, as many people did during the the
Stargate affair. They began copyrighting their articles to
disallow Stargate's copyright and its restrictions, but that was
1986/87.
</excerpt> <para>
The MSEN Archive Service has nothing to do with Stargate. The lessons
have been learned. It has a lot more to do with something like
Clarinet, especially given that I'd like to mix in some explicitly
copyrighted (no redistribution allowed) materials that appear on the
NewsBytes wire. The intellectual property rights of the original
authors will be respected, because obviously if I piss too many people
off all this effort will be wasted. I currently have a few individual
authors blocked from being reposted to comp.archives, I'd be happy to
add anyone who complains.
</para> <excerpt>
Now, there is no need to bother even in the US, as per
Geneva convention, all articles are implicitly copyright by their
authors. I think the implications of this for any "derivative
works" such as the article contents of comp.archives is reasonably
clear.
</excerpt> <para>
I don't think it's clear at all, and I resent your implications that
comp.archives is just a rebroadcasting service. I add a significant
amount of value, not only in the selection and presentation of the
materials, but also in the verification and categorization of articles
as they come out. In fact, it's not necessary for me to explicitly
assert copyrights to the article contents of comp.archives, because
under the terms which you have just described I already hold an
implicit copyright.
</para>
<sig>
Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. emv@msen.com
<snappy-quote>
Comp.archives is the best thing in the news. Bob Smart
</snappy-quote>
</sig>emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (06/26/91)
[1] Durlak J. and R. O'brien and O. Yigit, ``An Examination of the Social and Political Processses of a Cooperative Computer/Communications Network Under the Stress of Rapid Growth'', York University, 1987 (N/A) Is this text available from anywhere? --Ed
oz@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) (06/26/91)
Ed Vielmetti writes:
Would your objections be the same if the copyright applied only to the
entire collection of information posted to comp.archives, and not to
individual messages?
If you mean another manifestation of said collection of information
outside USENET, as in book form, [done by other moderators from time
to time], or as in another electronic information catalogue/service,
[what you seem to want], I see no reason to object.
Now, there is no need to bother even in the US, as per
Geneva convention, all articles are implicitly copyright by their
authors. I think the implications of this for any "derivative
works such as the article contents of comp.archives is reasonably
clear.
I don't think it's clear at all, and I resent your implications that
comp.archives is just a rebroadcasting service.
Ed, you resent something I never said or implied. I know moderation is
hard work when you have the articles in front of you, let alone having
to search for them. I also acknowledge that you work hard to add value
to those articles, and exactly because of that comp.archives is as
popular as it is. But, this does not change one fundamental fact about
a given article in comp.archives: you did not write the original, what
you generated and posted is a value-added derivative.
In fact, it's not necessary for me to explicitly
assert copyrights to the article contents of comp.archives, because
under the terms which you have just described I already hold an
implicit copyright.
This is where the term "derivative works" come into play. The original
author's copyright extends to any value-added derivatives under normal
circumstances.
ozvk@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (vivek.kalra) (06/27/91)
From article <EMV.91Jun25142055@bronte.aa.ox.com>, by emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti): > <excerpt> <msgid> OZ.91Jun25014110@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca </msgid> > oz@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes: > > Now, there is no need to bother even in the US, as per > Geneva convention, all articles are implicitly copyright by their > authors. I think the implications of this for any "derivative > works" such as the article contents of comp.archives is reasonably > clear. > > </excerpt> <para> > I don't think it's clear at all, and I resent your implications that > comp.archives is just a rebroadcasting service. I add a significant > amount of value, not only in the selection and presentation of the > materials, but also in the verification and categorization of articles > as they come out. ... > But isn't that what happens in *every* moderated news group? If not, just how is it different? And if it does, why aren't all the other moderators doing, or at least talking about doing, what you propose? Vivek Kalra -- vk@honasa.att.com | | I didn't do it!! :r ~/.disclaimer | -- Anonymous (tm)
timk@wynnds.xenitec.on.ca (Tim Kuehn) (06/27/91)
In article <1991Jun26.190247.24577@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> vk@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (vivek.kalra) writes: >From article <EMV.91Jun25142055@bronte.aa.ox.com>, >by emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti): >> <excerpt> <msgid> OZ.91Jun25014110@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca </msgid> >> oz@ursa.ccs.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes: >> >> Now, there is no need to bother even in the US, as per >> Geneva convention, all articles are implicitly copyright by their >> authors. I think the implications of this for any "derivative >> works" such as the article contents of comp.archives is reasonably >> clear. >> >> </excerpt> <para> >> I don't think it's clear at all, and I resent your implications that >> comp.archives is just a rebroadcasting service. I add a significant >> amount of value, not only in the selection and presentation of the >> materials, but also in the verification and categorization of articles >> as they come out. ... >But isn't that what happens in *every* moderated news group? If not, just >how is it different? And if it does, why aren't all the other moderators >doing, or at least talking about doing, what you propose? >Vivek Kalra vk@honasa.att.com Most other moderators receive submissions to a news group, and decide whether it's appropriate and/or relevent to the operation of the newsgroup. They basically decides if the article is worth posting or not, and if not, reject the article and notify the submitter, with comments why it was rejected or what could be done to make the submission postable to the group. What Ed is doing in comp.archives is not recieving submissions "Please post this to comp.archives" but rather actively scanning MB of text daily to find announcements of archives sites and it's programs, then going out and verifying that 'yes - it's there', along with other relevent information, and THEN posting it to comp.archives for the rest of us to see. So, in a sense, he's the one that's doing most of the work in keeping c.a going, not to mention adding a significant level of value by culling non- relevent announcements, and tagging the announcements with information about the archive for everybody else to see. This is not only a non- trivial effort, but it is what makes c.a different from other moderated newsgroups, which the first poster seems to be missing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tim Kuehn TDK Consulting Services (519)-888-0766 timk@wynnds.xenitec.on.ca -or- !{watmath|lsuc}!xenitec!wynnds!timk Valpo EE turned loose on unsuspecting world! News at 11! "You take it seriously when someone from a ballistics research lab calls you." Heard at a Unix user's meeting discussing connectivity issues.
moraes@cs.toronto.edu (Mark Moraes) (06/27/91)
vk@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (vivek.kalra) writes: >But isn't that what happens in *every* moderated news group? Not quite -- in most (all?) moderated newsgroups, people mail submissions to the moderator who filters them. (Brad may trawl rec.humor for funny pieces?) In comp.archives, the moderator trawls a large selection of news looking for appropriate articles and reposts them after some editing. (addition of Archive-name:, Archive-directory:, the new verification stuff, occasional deletion of the text of a patch or source). There's a difference -- Ed can probably give us stats on how much filtering he does manually and the amount of filtering done automatically. comp.archives has grown a lot since it started -- for your amusement, some stats (compression is usually 50-60%) from a comp.archives archive are enclosed. I can understand Ed's desire to convert it to a commercial service or a funded service. The alternative is to find a new moderator or moderators. For example, I doubt that anyone at UToronto, either in the CS dept or Information Science faculty would be seriously interested in actually paying money for newsgroups like msen.*, even if they contain pointers to useful ftp'able software. One of these days, maybe we'll convince the University that information is valuable even if it is in electronic form. (We *know* that information in an electronic form definitely can't be more valuable than the paper form, of course!) And that they should start spending a small fraction of what they spend on libraries on an electronic archive. Mark. --- -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 21913 Feb 18 1990 archive.misc.1988.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 261829 Feb 18 1990 archive.misc.1989.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 280238 Feb 18 1990 archive.misc.1990.01.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 442000 Feb 28 1990 archive.misc.1990.02.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 344581 Mar 31 1990 archive.misc.1990.03.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 280461 Apr 30 1990 archive.misc.1990.04.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 335888 May 31 1990 archive.misc.1990.05.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 218381 Jun 30 1990 archive.misc.1990.06.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 309505 Jul 31 1990 archive.misc.1990.07.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 347173 Aug 30 1990 archive.misc.1990.08.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 444306 Sep 30 1990 archive.misc.1990.09.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 399805 Oct 30 1990 archive.misc.1990.10.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 299339 Nov 28 1990 archive.misc.1990.11.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 498101 Dec 30 20:20 archive.misc.1990.12.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 537419 Jan 31 08:21 archive.misc.1991.01.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 594323 Feb 28 20:20 archive.misc.1991.02.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 848487 Mar 31 20:20 archive.misc.1991.03.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 729153 Apr 26 20:20 archive.misc.1991.04.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 moraes 836962 May 31 08:20 archive.misc.1991.05.Z