TIME: FIRST NATION IN CYBERSPACE
S.Boxx
TECHNOLOGY
FIRST NATION IN CYBERSPACE
Twenty million strong and adding a million new users a month, the Internet
is suddenly the place to be
By PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT
Back in the mid-1960s, at the height of the cold war, the Department of
Defense faced a tough question: How could orders be issued to the armed
forces if the U.S. were ravaged by a nuclear assault? The communication
hubs in place at the time -- the telephone switching offices and the radio
and TV broadcast stations -- were not only vulnerable to attack, they
would also probably be the first to go. The Pentagon needed a military
command-and-control system that would continue to operate even if most of
the phone lines were in tatters and the switches had melted down.
In 1964 a researcher at the Rand Corp. named Paul Baran came up with a
bizarre solution to this Strangelovian puzzle. He designed a
computer-communications network that had no hub, no central switching
station, no governing authority, and that assumed that the links
connecting any city to any other were totally unreliable. Baran's system
was the antithesis of the orderly, efficient phone network; it was more
like an electronic post office designed by a madman. In Baran's scheme,
each message was cut into tiny strips and stuffed into electronic
envelopes, called packets, each marked with the address of the sender and
the intended receiver. The packets were then released like so much
confetti into the web of interconnected computers, where they were tossed
back and forth over high-speed wires in the general direction of their
destination and reassembled when they finally got there. If any packets
were missing or mangled (and it was assumed that some would be), it was no
big deal; they were simply re-sent.
Baran's packet-switching network, as it came to be called, might have
been a minor footnote in cold war history were it not for one contingency:
it took root in the computers that began showing up in universities and
government research laboratories in the late 1960s and early 1970s and
became, by a path as circuitous as one taken by those wayward packets, the
technological underpinning of the Internet.
The Internet, for those who haven't been hanging out in cyberspace,
reading the business pages or following Doonesbury, is the mother of all
computer networks -- an anarchistic electronic freeway that has spread
uncontrollably and now circles the globe. It is at once the shining
archetype and the nightmare vision of the information highway that the
Clinton Administration has been touting and that the telephone and
cable-TV companies are racing to build. Much of what Bell Atlantic and
Time Warner are planning to sell -- interactivity, two-way communications,
multimedia info on demand -- the Internet already provides for free. And
because of its cold war roots, the Internet has one quality that makes it
a formidable competitor: you couldn't destroy it if you tried.
Nobody owns the Internet, and no single organization controls its use. In
the mid-1980s the National Science Foundation built the high-speed,
long-distance data lines that form Internet's U.S. backbone. But the major
costs of running the network are shared in a cooperative arrangement by
its primary users: universities, national labs, high-tech corporations and
foreign governments. Two years ago, the NSF lifted restrictions against
commercial use of the Internet, and in September the White House announced
a plan to make it the starting point for an even grander concept called
the National Information Infrastructure.
Suddenly the Internet is the place to be. College students are queuing up
outside computing centers to get online. Executives are ordering new
business cards that show off their Internet addresses. Millions of people
around the world are logging on to tap into libraries, call up satellite
weather photos, download free computer programs and participate in
discussion groups with everyone from lawyers to physicists to
sadomasochists. Even the President and Vice President have their own
Internet accounts (although they aren't very good at answering their
mail). ``It's the Internet boom,'' says network activist Mitch Kapor, who
thinks the true sign that popular interest has reached critical mass came
this summer when the New Yorker printed a cartoon showing two
computer-savvy canines with the caption, ``On the Internet, nobody knows
you're a dog.''
But the Internet is not ready for prime time. There are no TV Guides to
sort through the 5,000 discussion groups or the 2,500 electronic
newsletters or the tens of thousands of computers with files to share.
Instead of feeling surrounded by information, first-timers (``newbies'' in
the jargon of the Net) are likely to find themselves adrift in a
borderless sea. Old-timers say the first wave of dizziness doesn't last
long. ``It's like driving a car with a clutch,'' says Thomas Lunzer, a
network designer at SRI International, a California consulting firm.
``Once you figure it out, you can drive all over the place.''
But you must learn new languages (like UNIX), new forms of address (like
pres...@whitehouse.gov) and new ways of expressing feeling (like those
ubiquitous sideways smiley faces), and you must master a whole set of
rules for how to behave, called netiquette. Rule No. 1: Don't ask dumb
questions. In fact, don't ask any questions at all before you've read the
FAQ (frequently asked questions) files. Otherwise you risk annoying a few
hundred thousand people who may either yell at you (IN ALL CAPS!) or,
worse still, ignore you.
All that is starting to change, however, as successive waves of netters
demand, and eventually get, more user-friendly tools for navigating the
Internet. In fact, anyone with a desktop computer and a modem connecting
it to a phone line can now find ways into and around the network. ``The
Internet isn't just computer scientists talking to one another anymore,''
says Glee Willis, the engineering librarian at the University of Nevada at
Reno and one of nearly 20,000 (mostly female) academic librarians who have
joined the Internet in the past five years. ``It's a family place. It's a
place for perverts. It's everything rolled into one.''
As traffic swells, the Internet is beginning to suffer the problems of
any heavily traveled highway, including vandalism, break-ins and traffic
jams. ``It's like an amusement park that's so successful that there are
long waits for the most popular rides,'' says David Farber, a professor of
information science at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the
network's original architects. And while most users wait patiently for the
access and information they need, rogue hackers use stolen passwords to
roam the network, exploring forbidden computers and reading other people's
mail.
How big is the Internet? Part of its mystique is that nobody knows for
sure. The only fact that can be measured precisely is the number of
computers directly connected to it by high-speed links -- a figure that is
updated periodically by sending a computer program crawling around like a
Roto-Rooter, tallying the number of connections (last count: roughly 2
million). But that figure does not include military computers that for
security reasons are invisible to other users, or the hundreds of people
who may share a single Internet host. Nor does it include millions more
who dial into the Internet through the growing number of commercial
gateways, such as Panix and Netcom, which offer indirect telephone access
for $10 to $20 a month. When all these users are taken into account, the
total number of people around the world who can get into the Internet one
way or another may be 20 million. ``It's a large country,'' says Farber of
the Internet population. ``We ought to apply to the U.N. as the first
nation in cyberspace.''
That nation is about to get even bigger as the major commercial computer
networks -- Prodigy, CompuServe, America Online, GEnie and Delphi Internet
Service -- begin to dismantle the walls that have separated their private
operations from the public Internet. The success of the Internet is a
matter of frustration to the owners of the commercial networks, who have
tried all sorts of marketing tricks and still count fewer than 5 million
subscribers among them. Most commercial networks now allow electronic mail
to pass between their services and the Internet. Delphi, which was
purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in September, began providing its
customers full Internet access last summer. America Online (which
publishes an electronic version of Time) is scheduled to begin offering
limited Internet services later this month.
People who use these new entry points into the Net may be in for a shock.
Unlike the family-oriented commercial services, which censor messages they
find offensive, the Internet imposes no restrictions. Anybody can start a
discussion on any topic and say anything. There have been sporadic
attempts by local network managers to crack down on the raunchier
discussion groups, but as Internet pioneer John Gilmore puts it, ``The Net
interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.''
The casual visitor to the newsgroups on the Usenet (a bulletin-board
system that began as a competitor to the Internet but has been largely
subsumed by it) will discover discussion groups labeled, according to the
Net's idiosyncratic cataloging system, alt.sex.masturbation,
alt.sex.bondage and alt.sex.fetish.feet. On Internet Relay Chat, a global
24-hour-a-day message board, one can stumble upon imaginary orgies played
out with one-line typed commands (``Now I'm taking off your shirt . .
.''). In alt.binaries.pictures.erotica, a user can peek at snapshots that
would make a sailor blush.
But those who focus on the Internet's sexual content risk missing the
point. For every sexually oriented discussion group there are hundreds on
tamer and often more substantial topics ranging from bungee jumping to
particle physics. Last week Virginia college student Chris Glover
responded to a distressed message from a suicidal undergraduate in Denver.
After two hours of messages back and forth, Glover was able to pinpoint
the woman's location and call for help.
With all this variety, Internet users are unimpressed by television's
promise of a 500-channel future. The Internet already delivers 10,000
channels, and the only obstacle that prevents it from carrying live TV
pictures is the bandwidth (or carrying capacity) of the data lines. Some
video clips -- and at least one full-length video movie -- are already
available on the network. And last spring, writer Carl Malamud began using
the Internet to distribute a weekly ``radio'' interview show called Geek
of the Week. Malamud is undeterred by the fact that it takes a computer
about an hour over a high-speed modem to capture the 30 minutes of sound
that a $10 radio can pick up instantly for free. But bandwidth capacity
has nowhere to go but up, says Malamud, and its cost will only go down.
The Internet, however, will have to go through some radical changes
before it can join the world of commerce. Subsidized for so long by the
Federal Government, its culture is not geared to normal business
activities. It does not take kindly to unsolicited advertisements; use
electronic mail to promote your product and you are likely to be inundated
with hate mail directed not only at you personally but also at your
supervisor, your suppliers and your customers as well. ``It's a perfect
Marxist state, where almost nobody does any business,'' says Farber. ``But
at some point that will have to change.''
The change has already begun. NSF's contribution now represents about 10%
of the total cost of the network, and the agency is scheduled to start
phasing out its support next April, removing at the same time what few
restrictions still remain against commercial activity. According to Tim
O'Reilly, president of O'Reilly & Associates, a publisher experimenting
with advertiser-supported Internet magazines, the system could evolve in
one of two ways: either entrepreneurs will manage to set up shop on a
free-market version of the Internet, or some consortium will take the
whole thing over and turn it into a giant CompuServe. ``That's an
outcome,'' O'Reilly says, ``that would effectively destroy the Internet as
we know it.''
As the traffic builds and the billboards go up, some Internet veterans
are mourning the old electronic freeway. ``I feel kind of sad about it,''
says Denise Caruso, editorial director of Friday Holdings, a publisher
specializing in new media. ``It was such a dynamic, pulsing thing. I
wonder whether we shouldn't have left it alone.'' Others see the period of
uncertainty ahead as a rare opportunity for citizens to shape their own
technological destiny. ``We need . . . a firm idea of the kind of media
environment we would like to see in the future,'' warns Howard Rheingold
in his new book, The Virtual Community. While it may be difficult for
communities as diverse as those on the Internet to set their own agenda,
it seems increasingly likely that if they don't, someone else will do it
for them.
With reporting by David S. Jackson/San Francisco and Wendy King/Washington
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
To find out more about the anon service, send mail to he...@anon.penet.fi.
Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized,
and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned.
Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to ad...@anon.penet.fi.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
out that TIME is protected by copyright and that this article has been
reprinted without permission. Using the Internet and anonymous services to
violate copyright laws is not going to do any of us any good.
Phil Elmer-DeWitt
TIME
Graham Toal
:Flattered as I am to see my article appear hear, I feel obliged to point
I hope you're listening, Lance Detweiler!!! :-)
(He doesn't *really* still think that the whole world doesn't
realise S.Boxx and Lance 'Medusa' Detweiler are one and the same, does he?)
G
tim werner
I hope you read the whole thing, including:
Eric Hollander
Information should be free. Copyright laws are no longer serving to make
the world a better place. But in any case, they are no longer enforcable,
what with the spread of the 'net and cheap, high-acuracy OCR. We need to
find a better system. There's far too much information out there for paper
to be an effective storage and retreival system.
e
Mats Bergstrom
> Using the Internet and anonymous services to violate
> copyright laws is not going to do any of us any good.
> Phil Elmer-DeWitt
> TIME
Well, it did me some good since I really appreciated your
article and I never read Time.
Scott Russell
>e
I think all this talk about the 'net growing and changing RSN really isn't
paying attention. It's way too nebulous and humongous for anyone to think
it's doing anything BUT. As a new (3-4 months) netter, I see not the net
changing (It's Delta-V seems pretty set to me), but the governments' ways
of dealing with it instead. I'd bet that that '20 million' estimate is
pretty conservative, and from what I've seen, we like it just fine the way
it is.
Information not only should be free, on the 'net it IS free. (with the
exception of the $23.00 that I send to Interaccess Co 9400 W.Foster Ave,
Suite 111 Chicago Il 60656) Everyone has to understand that copyright
laws don't mean much anymore, and work on rebuilding the information
infrastructure from that.
Sorry about the plug, but
a) They're great guys.
b) I'm NOT affiliated or getting kickbacks.
c) People need to know where to get public access.
Mats Bergstrom
On 4 Dec 1993, Scott Russell wrote:
> .......................... Everyone has to understand that copyright
> laws don't mean much anymore, and work on rebuilding the information
> infrastructure from that.
An author writes a would be bestseller. Unfortunately (for him and
his publisher) the first sold copy is OCRd and sent over the Net
from the xyz.anon account to the 250.000.000 subscribers of the
pirate.reading.newbooks group (since it is so good 25.000.000 of
these actually transfer it to their palmtops for bed reading). The
author becomes famous but the final selling of 25.000 paper copies
hardly compensates him for his work (it took him 3 years to write it).
How do we rebuild the infrastructure to prevent the author from starving?
Eric Hollander
Scott Russell <qu...@interaccess.com> wrote:
> Information not only should be free, on the 'net it IS free. (with the
>exception of the $23.00 that I send to Interaccess Co 9400 W.Foster Ave,
>Suite 111 Chicago Il 60656) Everyone has to understand that copyright
>laws don't mean much anymore, and work on rebuilding the information
>infrastructure from that.
Yup. Free information is almost unstoppable, I believe. But just to make
extra sure that it really is unstoppable, there are these remailer things
which you can use to post anonymously. Everyone should know about and use
these thigns. Simply follow the instructions below, and send anon mail to
alt-best-o...@cs.utexad.edu, for example, and it'll post here. If
you think you have some cool software that would help a lot of people, or
some interesting information we should all know about, go ahead and post
it. (NOTE: please don't abuse these things, though. Post stuff only in
appropriate newsgroups.) I've attached a copy of the remailer
instructions. This and other information is available by anon ftp from
soda.berkeley.edu:/pub/cypherpunks. While you're in there, you might also
want to check out the pgp stuff. If you don't have pgp running on your
machine yet, you might want to give it a try.
Enjoy!
e
How to use the Cypherpunks Remailers
------------------------------------
by Hal Finney, <74076...@compuserve.com>
First written: January 10, 1993
Last revised: May 29, 1993
Several sites are running simple remailers based on Perl scripts
originally created by Eric Hughes and using the mh utility program
"slocal". I wrote a simple slocal replacement in Perl, and added
PGP decryption. The code for these remailers is available by
anonymous ftp from soda.berkeley.edu, in the cypherpunks/remailer
directory. The latest version of this document may be found there as
well, as long as other scripts useful in operating the remailers.
At the bottom of this document is a list of currently available Cypherpunks
remailers.
These basic remailers have one main function: they will automatically
forward a message to any requested destination, removing all incoming
header fields except "Subject:". Although this is less power than
some other remailers provide, the Cypherpunks remailers do not require
the operator to have root privileges on the machine which runs the
remailer. It basically has to be a Unix machine which runs Perl and
which supports the feature of looking for a ".forward" file in the
user's home directory to find the name of a program for processing
incoming mail. Many Unix systems provide these capabilities.
Basic Remailing Functions
-------------------------
There are two general ways of specifying the remailing instructions.
The simplest is to add an extra field to the header of the message.
All of the Cypherpunks remailers will accept the field name
"Request-Remailing-To:". (Several of the remailers also accept shorter
versions of this name, but there is no standard for the short versions
accepted.) Simply put the address that you want the mail to be forwarded
to after "Request-Remailing-To:" in the message header, and the forwarding
will be done. (Case is important in this header field, so be sure to put
in the capital letters as shown.)
The remailers do not create aliases or allow replies to such anonymously
forwarded mail. (But see below for how anonymous replies can be
done using the encryption enhancements.)
Here is an example:
================================================================
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 92 22:13:57 -0800
Message-Id: <930110061...@soda.berkeley.edu>
From: "Sue Jones" <s...@mec.com>
To: hfi...@shell.portal.com
Subject: Anonymous mail
Request-Remailing-To: j...@tap.com
Joe - This is some anonymous mail from me.
================================================================
This is a message from s...@mec.com to be anonymously forwarded to
j...@tap.com. It is directed to the Cypherpunks remailer at address
hfi...@shell.portal.com. When Joe receives the message it will look
something like:
================================================================
Sender: hfi...@shell.portal.com
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 92 01:03:31 -0800
Message-Id: <930111070...@shell.portal.com>
To: j...@tap.com
From: nob...@shell.portal.com
Subject: Anonymous mail
Remailed-By: Hal Finney <hfi...@shell.portal.com>
Joe - This is some anonymous mail from me.
================================================================
All the identifying information from Sue's message header has been
replaced, except for the subject line.
Many people have mailers which will not allow them to add fields to the
headers of the messages they send. Instead, they can only put material
into the bodies of the mail. In order to accomodate such systems, the
Cypherpunks remailers provide a mechanism for "pasting" the first few
lines of the message body into the header. These lines can then contain
"Request-Remailing-To:" commands.
This is done by having the first non-blank line of your message be the
special token "::" (two colons). If the Cypherpunks remailers see this
as the first non-blank line, all following lines up to a blank one
will be pasted into your mail header. Then the message will be processed
as usual. Here is how the message above would be prepared if Sue were
not able to add lines to her outgoing message header.
================================================================
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 92 22:13:57 -0800
Message-Id: <930110061...@soda.berkeley.edu>
From: "Sue Jones" <s...@mec.com>
To: hfi...@shell.portal.com
Subject: Anonymous mail
::
Request-Remailing-To: j...@tap.com
Joe - This is some anonymous mail from me.
================================================================
There are three common mistakes which I have seen in messages using
these remailers. The first is to leave the "::" off. Sometimes people
are not sure whether the text they write goes into the header or the
message body. They may think they are putting it into the header, but
it is actually in the body. The "::" is needed if it will be in the
body. The second mistake is leaving off the blank line after the
material to be added to the header. In that case the whole message gets
added to the header (up to the first blank in the message), causing
considerable confusion for the remailer and generally not allowing
the mail to be forwarded. The third mistake is to misspell
"Request-Remailing-To:".
Anonymous Posting
-----------------
Although the only remailer function is to forward messages to someone,
they can also be used (indirectly) for anonymous posting. This can
be done by mailing to one of the mail-to-news gateways offered at a
few sites. These gateway computers will automatically post any message
they receive with a special address format. A commonly used format is to
take the newsgroup name and replace "." with "-", then add the address
of the gateway after an "@" sign.
These gateways tend not to have a very long lifetime, but at least at
this writing one operates at cs.utexas.edu. Another operates at
ucbvax.berkeley.edu, but that one is only available for mail from
Berkeley sites. Fortunately, there are cypherpunks remailers operating
>from Berkeley sites (see the list below). By using one of those remailers
to direct the mail to ucbvax.berkeley.edu, it should be possible to post
to news.
As an example, to post to sci.crypt, send mail to "sci-...@cs.utexas.edu",
or use one of the Berkeley cypherpunks remailers to send mail to
"sci-...@ucbvax.berkeley.edu". By using remailers in conjunction with
mail-to-news gateways, anonymous posting is possible. Realize, though,
that people will not be able to respond to you directly (but see below
for the anonymous address implementation).
(Sometimes people ask how to post to groups with "-" in their names,
since these gateways turn "-" characters into "."'s. I don't know the answer
but if anyone finds out please tell me and I will incorporate it into a
future version of this document.)
Chaining Remailers
------------------
Remailers can be chained for somewhat more security. The simplest way
to do this is to put multiple blocks starting with :: and ending with
a blank line at the beginning of the message. Here is the example above,
re-done to pass through two remailers, first h...@soda.berkeley.edu, then
hfi...@shell.portal.com.
================================================================
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 92 22:13:57 -0800
Message-Id: <930110061...@soda.berkeley.edu>
From: "Sue Jones" <s...@mec.com>
To: h...@soda.berkeley.edu
Subject: Anonymous mail
::
Request-Remailing-To: hfi...@shell.portal.com
::
Request-Remailing-To: j...@tap.com
Joe - This is some anonymous mail from me.
================================================================
This mail is sent to the remailer at h...@soda.berkeley.edu. It will strip
off the first "::" and the "Request-Remailing-To: hfi...@shell.portal.com"
lines, and send it to the "shell.portal.com" remailer. That remailer will
then send the message to Joe. Chains can be made as long as desired by
extending this scheme.
Chaining does increase the complexity of the path a message takes,
but the gain in security is limited because the whole path is visible
in the message when you send it. Adding encryption to the remailer
allows more security, especially when combined with chaining.
Encrypting Enhancements
-----------------------
Encryption/decryption for the Cypherpunks remailers is done using
Phillip Zimmermann's "underground" public-key encryption program,
PGP. Although PGP's legality for use in the U.S. is debatable (and
often debated), it is widely available at overseas ftp sites and at
some domestic sites. Use "archie" or a similar service to find the
latest version.
The encryption enhancement to the remailers is done in a fairly simple
way. Each remailer which supports this enhancement has a PGP public
key which is made public. (PGP keys for current Cypherpunks
remailers are listed at the bottom of this document.) Any message
in the above formats can be encrypted with the PGP key of a remailer,
and sent to that remailer. To show that it is a PGP message, the
mail header must have the line "Encrypted: PGP" added to it.
Upon receipt of a message with such a header line, the remailers will
attempt to decrypt the incoming message using their PGP secret key.
The result of the decryption is then subject to the same processing
steps described above.
Here is an example of the use of this system. We start with the
second example above. I will just show the message body as the
sender composes it:
================================================================
::
Request-Remailing-To: j...@tap.com
Joe - This is some anonymous mail from me.
================================================================
This is the body of the message which Sue is sending, anonymously,
to Joe. It has the "::" and "Request-Remailing-To:" lines, followed
by a blank, then the text to be sent to Joe.
Sue would then encrypt this file using PGP, with the "-a" switch for
Ascii output, using the public key of the remailer. This would
yield something like:
================================================================
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: 2.2
hEwCG6rHcT8LtDcBAf4rGrBciM/mJhDRkjvIhOlUaUI2MgW6GNvyxkPVc0FM34RR
MWTU+TdhGARMWoghyYi96/p0+PrBceLviahMdj/9pgAAAHE/mXUHdmuWjcQeeBuP
NsbajDo1ygxk/0WM2AEXZzzGSTTP9fW5wVi52QxVv3ok7S3dNlX+kUDiUCxBjSdf
UfnoHo5/ng0jVdQgNA39toaHOpEMEUc+JCQXuXwTJ+OfuVssCFnUWYX2kYddgNrE
4qvm3w==
=xsVd
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
================================================================
This is a typical PGP output file. Now, this is the file that Sue
would send to the remailer. But first she needs to mark it with the
"Encrypted: PGP" header line. Using the "::" pasting operator, she
would edit this output file, adding the required header, to produce:
================================================================
::
Encrypted: PGP
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: 2.2
hEwCG6rHcT8LtDcBAf4rGrBciM/mJhDRkjvIhOlUaUI2MgW6GNvyxkPVc0FM34RR
MWTU+TdhGARMWoghyYi96/p0+PrBceLviahMdj/9pgAAAHE/mXUHdmuWjcQeeBuP
NsbajDo1ygxk/0WM2AEXZzzGSTTP9fW5wVi52QxVv3ok7S3dNlX+kUDiUCxBjSdf
UfnoHo5/ng0jVdQgNA39toaHOpEMEUc+JCQXuXwTJ+OfuVssCFnUWYX2kYddgNrE
4qvm3w==
=xsVd
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
================================================================
This is what she would send to hfi...@shell.portal.com. Note that
this file does not reveal the true destination of Sue's message. Only
when the remailer decrypts the file will it see to whom to send it.
As with ordinary remailing commands, certain mistakes are more common.
The most frequent is to forget the "Encrypted: PGP" header line,
which must be either in the message header itself, or be put there
with the "::" pasting token as in the example above. Another common
mistake is to forget the "::" within the encrypted message itself,
or to forget the blank line after the "Request-Remailing-To" line
within the encrypted text.
Chaining Encrypted Messages
---------------------------
Chaining encrypted messages is basically a matter of repeating the
encrypting steps. For example, suppose Sue wanted to chain two remailers,
first going through ele...@rosebud.ee.uh.edu, then through
hfi...@shell.portal.com. She has to first encrypt it for the second
remailer in the chain, then encrypt the resulting output for the
first remailer. That way, when she sends the message, each remailer
will decrypt one "layer" of the message, revealing the hidden message
for the next one in the chain.
(Think of the "nested envelope" model. Encrypting a message is like
putting it into an envelope that only a certain remailer can open.
Chaining remailers is like sealing one envelope inside another. To send
a letter through two remailers, you would first seal it inside the envelope
of the second remailer, then seal that one inside the envelope of the
first remailer.)
In this example, Sue would take the output just above, which is the
message for the hfi...@shell.portal.com remailer, and add remailing
instructions to get it sent to that remailer:
================================================================
::
Request-Remailing-To: hfi...@shell.portal.com
::
Encrypted: PGP
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: 2.2
hEwCG6rHcT8LtDcBAf4rGrBciM/mJhDRkjvIhOlUaUI2MgW6GNvyxkPVc0FM34RR
MWTU+TdhGARMWoghyYi96/p0+PrBceLviahMdj/9pgAAAHE/mXUHdmuWjcQeeBuP
NsbajDo1ygxk/0WM2AEXZzzGSTTP9fW5wVi52QxVv3ok7S3dNlX+kUDiUCxBjSdf
UfnoHo5/ng0jVdQgNA39toaHOpEMEUc+JCQXuXwTJ+OfuVssCFnUWYX2kYddgNrE
4qvm3w==
=xsVd
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
================================================================
This is going to be sent to the "rosebud" remailer, so she encrypts this
file with that remailer's public key. The result would be like this:
================================================================
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: 2.2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=rbpv
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
================================================================
Now, she will need to mark this message with the "Encrypted: PGP"
header:
================================================================
::
Encrypted: PGP
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: 2.2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=rbpv
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
================================================================
This message is what would actually be sent to ele...@rosebud.ee.uh.edu.
It would decrypt it and send the inner encrypted message on to
hfi...@shell.portal.com, which would decrypt its input and finally get
the cleartext message which Sue is sending to Joe.
Using chained encryption conceals the fact that Sue is communicating
with Joe from all participants (except Sue). The first remailer
sees a message from Sue, which it decrypts, but it doesn't know
who the final recipient is. The second remailer sees that the message
is going to Joe, after decrypting it, but it doesn't know who originally
sent it. No one is in a position to pair up Sue with Joe.
Creating these chained messages is tedious if done by hand. There
have been some Unix shell scripts posted on the Cypherpunks list which
help automate the process. These are available by anonymous ftp from
the Cypherpunks list site, soda.berkeley.edu. They make it quite easy
to send chained encrypted messages.
Anonymous Addresses
-------------------
The encrypted remailers allow an interesting form of an anonymous
address. An anonymous address is an address which allows someone to
send you mail without knowing who you really are or your true email
address. Some remailers implement this by creating aliases or
pseudonyms for each user, and keeping a table which allows them to
look up a given alias and find out who the user is that it belongs
to. The simple Cypherpunks remailers don't keep any kind of table
information, so it is necessary to embed all of the necessary
information in the anonymous address itself.
The simplest form of an anonymous address is a "Request-Remailing-To"
block, encrypted with the PGP key of a remailer. In the examples
above, suppose Sue wanted to supply Joe with a way of reaching her,
without revealing her address. The first step in creating such an
anonymous address would be for her to create a file which held:
================================================================
::
Request-Remailing-To: s...@mec.com
================================================================
This is just the same as the kind of remailing request blocks which
would be put at the front of a message for an ordinary use of the
remailers. Note the "::" token as the first line, and the blank
line which comes after the "Request-Remailing-To:". Sue puts her own
real email address on the "Request-Remailing-To:" line.
Now, she can't send this to Joe or he'd see her email address. What
she does instead is to encrypt it with the public key of the remailer
she wants to use for the anonymous address forwarding. Suppose it
is hfi...@shell.portal.com. This would produce:
================================================================
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: 2.2
hEwCG6rHcT8LtDcBAf0R3rsCl1z0K3VI8bGTa0b/4MQdh3VAhNd+PIDkncwcHhk1
1w4p6FST92QURYxyXXW4FVqSuJL0KepPKgXh+36kpgAAAEyHhcro57nKPUqC9/xn
TLIoqX5CXBiKPp32fmSUyrgJf+thg9oTviReiMa/vvhtoher4nmBRSgcUBmJPOEX
/ri9dIm4kMKc95R6p3at
=0C8o
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
================================================================
Now, to make it so that the remailer will know to process it with PGP,
Sue must add the "Encrypted: PGP" header line to the beginning using
the "::" pasting token:
================================================================
::
Encrypted: PGP
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: 2.2
hEwCG6rHcT8LtDcBAf0R3rsCl1z0K3VI8bGTa0b/4MQdh3VAhNd+PIDkncwcHhk1
1w4p6FST92QURYxyXXW4FVqSuJL0KepPKgXh+36kpgAAAEyHhcro57nKPUqC9/xn
TLIoqX5CXBiKPp32fmSUyrgJf+thg9oTviReiMa/vvhtoher4nmBRSgcUBmJPOEX
/ri9dIm4kMKc95R6p3at
=0C8o
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
================================================================
The resulting file can be used as Sue's anonymous address. Here is
how she would use it. She would include it in her message to Bob,
with a comment like:
================================================================
Bob - If you want to reply to me, just take the block of text below,
starting at the "::" line, and put it at the front of the message
you want to send to me. Then send the whole thing to
hfi...@shell.portal.com. That remailer will forward your message to me.
Here is the block of text to use:
::
Encrypted: PGP
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: 2.2
hEwCG6rHcT8LtDcBAf0R3rsCl1z0K3VI8bGTa0b/4MQdh3VAhNd+PIDkncwcHhk1
1w4p6FST92QURYxyXXW4FVqSuJL0KepPKgXh+36kpgAAAEyHhcro57nKPUqC9/xn
TLIoqX5CXBiKPp32fmSUyrgJf+thg9oTviReiMa/vvhtoher4nmBRSgcUBmJPOEX
/ri9dIm4kMKc95R6p3at
=0C8o
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
================================================================
Bob, if he follows these directions, will put that block of text at
the beginning of his message, followed by what he wants to send to
Sue. This will produce something like:
================================================================
::
Encrypted: PGP
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: 2.2
hEwCG6rHcT8LtDcBAf0R3rsCl1z0K3VI8bGTa0b/4MQdh3VAhNd+PIDkncwcHhk1
1w4p6FST92QURYxyXXW4FVqSuJL0KepPKgXh+36kpgAAAEyHhcro57nKPUqC9/xn
TLIoqX5CXBiKPp32fmSUyrgJf+thg9oTviReiMa/vvhtoher4nmBRSgcUBmJPOEX
/ri9dIm4kMKc95R6p3at
=0C8o
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
Hi - I don't know who you are, but I am interested in hearing more
about you. Signed, Bob.
================================================================
He would send this to hfi...@shell.portal.com. That remailer would
see the "Encrypted: PGP" header line after processing the "::" pasting
token, and decrypt the PGP message. This would produce:
================================================================
::
Request-Remailing-To: s...@mec.com
Hi - I don't know who you are, but I am interested in hearing more
about you. Signed, Bob.
================================================================
This would then be operated on in the usual way, causing the message
to be forwarded to Sue. This is how Sue's anonymous address could
allow Bob to send to her without knowing who she is, and without the
remailer having to keep any lists of aliases or pseudonyms.
An extension of this scheme will allow Sue to create an anonymous
address which chains through two or more remailers. She has to
repeatedly encrypt them, just as when setting up a chained remailing
sequence. This procedure can be cumbersome, but scripts should soon
be available to automate the process.
The anonymous addresses provided by the Cypherpunks remailers are
not nearly as easy to use as the automatic aliases maintained by
some of the other remailers. They do not support the automatic insertion
of the anonymous address when the recipient uses the "reply" function
of his mail program. He has to manually copy this rather large block
of text to the front of his message. Perhaps in the future it will
be possible to embed anonymous addresses of this kind in a specially
labelled header field, and to teach remailers to use such addresses
for replying if they exist.
The anonymous addresses are also rather lengthy in this form, so
again the pseudonym-based addresses may be the more practical way to
go. It is interesting, though, to see that very simple remailing
software can provide rather advanced functionality.
Current Cypherpunks Remailers
-----------------------------
All of the following remailers accept the basic "Request-Remailing-To"
remailing request:
h...@pmantis.berkeley.edu
h...@cicada.berkeley.edu
h...@soda.berkeley.edu
The following remailers also accept the "Encrypted: PGP" function.
The public keys for all of the remailers (plus the special one mentioned
below) are in the keyring file below. They can all be used for
anonymous addresses as described above.
pha...@mead.u.washington.edu
h...@alumni.caltech.edu
rema...@rebma.mn.org
ele...@rosebud.ee.uh.edu
hfi...@shell.portal.com
The next remailer is a variant on the Cypherpunks remailers. It will
work _only_ with encrypted messages, using its public key (in the keyring
file below). But it allows a simpler syntax. It is not necessary to
put "Encrypted: PGP" into the message header. In addition, the "::" pasting
operator is assumed, so you can leave that off. Also, instead of
"Request-Remailing-To:" you can say just "To:". So messages are much
simpler in format for this remailer. Using our example above, Sue need
only encrypt a file consisting of:
================================================================
To: j...@tap.com
Joe - This is some anonymous mail from me.
================================================================
She would encrypt this using the public key of the remailer below, and
send the resulting PGP output directly to that remailer.
Presently, this special remailer does not support anonymous addresses.
The remailer address is:
Here is a PGP keyring file containing keys for the encryption based
remailers listed here:
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: 2.2e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=DGUR
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Summary
-------
Although these remailers are not as fully featured as some of the
alias-based anonymous remailers in use, they do provide useful capabilities
and they are designed to be run by ordinary users on a wide class of
Unix based computers. It is hoped that future enhancements to these
remailers will make it possible for almost everyone to run remailers
routinely as part of the general culture of email users. Such a system
could provide real privacy in the use of electronic mail.
Vivek Sadananda Pai
As a paying subscriber of Time magazine and a strong
supporter of intellectual property laws, I think the
idea of "liberating" information is a bunch of crap.
It's plain and simple theft, and it inevitably leads
to the lack of new information - if everyone pirated
Time, and Time subscriptions fell below the threshold
needed to keep it going, it would shut down. Then
where do you propose to get your information?
People who will be making their lives from manufacturing
intellectual property (and I assume you fall into that
category) should realize that this theft may one day affect
you personally.
-Vivek
Gary L Snethen
>As a paying subscriber of Time magazine and a strong
>supporter of intellectual property laws, I think the
>idea of "liberating" information is a bunch of crap.
>It's plain and simple theft, and it inevitably leads
>to the lack of new information - if everyone pirated
>Time, and Time subscriptions fell below the threshold
>needed to keep it going, it would shut down. Then
>where do you propose to get your information?
>People who will be making their lives from manufacturing
>intellectual property (and I assume you fall into that
>category) should realize that this theft may one day affect
>you personally.
I'm really not trying to jump in and add fuel to the fire, but such excerpts
provide incentive for me, personally, to *purchase* the magazine. Also, it's
not plain and simple 'theft'... at best, it is quoting without permission,
and at worst, it is copyright 'infringement', which is an altogether different
crime than 'theft'.
I won't dispute the fact that it's illegal. But I must propose that your
perspective on the effect of changing the notion of 'intellectual property'
is but one of many valid viewpoints. In your example, if Time shut down,
and people were left without the information they previously had, the amount
people would be willing to pay for such information would rise significantly.
As long as there is a need for information, an equilibrium will develop that
keeps Time in business. Besides, I seriously doubt any Time subscriber I've
ever met would actually cancel his or her subscription in preference for a
cheap imitation.
---Xeno
--
Gary L Snethen
xe...@iastate.edu
Eric Hollander
Brent C.J. Britton <br...@media.mit.edu> wrote:
>Communist.
>
>Ahem... sorry. Let me rephrase.
Sir,
No need to rephrase. "Communist" is exactly the right word. The point is
that the system of capitalism works really well with physical goods, like
laser printers, for instance, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to treat
information the same way. It's possible to make unlimitted copies of
information in digital form, like an article in TIME, at almost no cost.
This is not true of laser printers. The graph of product cost vs units
produced for things like laser printers looks very different from the graph
for information. The first laser printer costs about $1mil or whatever for
R&D. The millionth laser printer costs about $500, and the R&D is somewhat
spread out over all the units produced.
The same graph for (digital form) information is radically different. The
first copy of Microsoft Word costed $1mil (or something). Every single copy
after that costs $0. There's a big difference.
The other difference is the following: a large number of people have
computers. Without software, these computers are non-productive. The more
software they have access to, the more productive they can be.
It seems like it would be a good idea to just pay Microsoft $X (where X is
something large) for rights to MS Word, and then let everyone with a computer
enjoy increased productivity because of this. Yes, this is socialism. No,
I do not advocate socialism for any kinds of material goods.
TIME magazine is a good magazine, and lots of people put lots of effort into
it, and millions of people read it. Let me state right now that any
proposed legal system which resulted in a) TIME not being produced and b)
people (like Philip Elmer-DeWitt <p...@panix.com>) not being paid to produce
TIME would be a really bad system. Any legal change which resulted in the
TIME staff making any less than they do make now would be a bad change. The
same applies to all other artists: The Red Hot Chili Peppers should
continue making millions of dollars, directors should be paid for their
films, etc.
However, under the current system, if an author writes a book which would
have a market, of, say, 100 people, there's no way he can make any money for
that. No publisher will print the work, and he can post it to the 'net, and
people might read it, but no one will pay him for it. This is also a big
problem.
There are even bigger problems. Imagine you live in a small farming village
in Kenya. Your hopes of getting access to almost any kind of published
information are pretty slim.
And imagine you're an information consumer like me. I would read some parts
of TIME if I could search for articles by subject or keywords. There are
some keywords that I would want to read anything about, no matter where they
come up. And yet, the only way for me to do this is to hire a large number
of people to sit down and do research for me. I sure don't have the money
for that.
And these are only some of the problems with the current system.
But there are some other ways things could be. Here are some ideas that
I've had (and heard from other people). Probably some combination of these
would be needed. There are probably many other ideas no one has thought up
yet which would work, but these are some I've heard of:
Fund information production the same way scientific research is funded, by
having university grants, etc.
Have hardware producers give grants. If Apple makes computers, they are
likely to have more customers for their hardware if the customers know they
will have lots of (free) software available for it.
Socialism, just the same way we fund things like freeways and the military.
Something like the NEA.
A system that would allow popular artists (like the Chili Peppers) to make
millions, and yet would allow artists with small audiences (like, 100
people) to make some money: Have an "information tax" attached to purchases
of hardware (like DAT drives, digital VCRs, computers, electronic book
readers, etc). This tax should be progressive (higher tax rates for Crays,
lower rates for electronic book readers or DAT machines). Have
reading/playing hardware on thet net. When someone reads a certain work,
this fact gets forwarded on to some place where that's tallied up. These
tallies could be used to fund creative people in proportion to how popular
their work is. Therefore, TIME would make lots of money, probably more
money than it makes now. People wouldn't have to waste money on the whole
printing process, so people would have more money left over, and so the
info-tax could be high. This would mean more money could go to info
producers, instead of being wasted on paper.
Of course, this is all speculation. A system like this has never existed in
the past, so it's impossible to say exactly what it would look like or how
it would be, but the one thing that is clear is that copyright laws and the
present system is going to stop working RSN, so we need to find a better way.
e
Dianne Hackborn
Vivek Sadananda Pai <vi...@owlnet.rice.edu> wrote:
| As a paying subscriber of Time magazine and a strong
| supporter of intellectual property laws, I think the
| idea of "liberating" information is a bunch of crap.
| It's plain and simple theft, and it inevitably leads
| to the lack of new information - if everyone pirated
| Time, and Time subscriptions fell below the threshold
| needed to keep it going, it would shut down. Then
| where do you propose to get your information?
Irrespective of whether it's right or wrong, I think out concept of
"copyright" and "intellectual property" are going to be *forced* to change
as networks become a larger part of our society. Our current copyright
system is based on product - it works because anything you write or draw or
compose needs to be distributed, and up until now that meant putting it on
paper or tape or whatever, and selling a *product*. Yes, some people will
copy it, but the resources needed to make a copy so far outweigh the
information that this will be a limited activity. And anyone who decides
to copy it on a large enough scale that it is worth their effort will be
involved in a large enough operation that they are very vulnerable to laws
the government puts in place.
Now, we are creating a new medium in which *copying* is an intrinsic
property. Sure, you can try to create copy protection or other ways to
protect our traditional structure, but all of them will fighting a loosing
battle against the natural properties of the medium they are on.
For example:
Today, you read a good paperback story and think a friend might like it.
You can either let your friend borrow the book, tell her she should get a
copy to read, or try photocopying all 300 pages. Which do you do?
Obviously photocopying is out of the question. You can let her borrow it,
but if you both like it, there's a good chance she'll get another copy.
Tomorrow, let's say there is a service which allows you to buy stories
through the net. You buy one, love it, and want to share it with your
friend. What do you do: forward it to her, with a note at the top: "this
is a great story!", or send her a message telling about the story and where
she can get it. The second you could argue is more "ethical", but what if
she wants to borrow it to see if she likes it? Should you forward it to
her then?
How many of us have dowloaded a shareware program that we find really
useful, but never got around to paying the registration fee because it's
such a pain in the ass?
Personally, I am starting to look for system where someone can create a
story/picture/composition/whatever and place it on the net, essentially
making it "public domain." However, this work would have built into it a
pointer to its creator, along with possibly a suggested "fee" for its use.
Then, when anyone gets it and finds it useful or enjoyable or worthwhile,
they can automatically forward whatever amount of money they want from
their account to the work's original author. The key is: paying for this
work is as easy as forwarding it to a friend.
And, similar to our present system, if someone decides to change the
"author" pointer to his or her own account, this would be something that
the government can fairly easy step in a protect the original author's
rights. Otherwise, it would generally work on its own without a lot of
work by people to mold the media to how they feel it should work.
In a way, I think that we are in the process of moving from a
product-oriented economy into a consumer-oriented one.
I probably should mention that I do *not* pirate software. It goes against
how our present system work, and I have an obligation to support the
companies which make products I like. But think the even the idea of
'pirating' software or anything else will not be able to last.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dianne Kyra Hackborn "The popularity of Reagan was essentially the
hac...@xanth.cs.orst.edu implementation of a collective masochistic
BIX: dhack / IRC: Dianne will to be sodomized by a movie cowboy."
Oregon State University -- Jim Lipschorken
Eddy Robinson
>out that TIME is protected by copyright and that this article has been
>reprinted without permission.
I heartily respect your concern, but did you *really* expect anything else?
I'd grin and bear it if I were you: otherwise you'll be submerged by various
netters who castigate Time-Warner for trying to restrict information to those
with more money or whatever. Ask not what the net can do for you, but what
you can do for the net.
Incidentally I'm not responsible for the post in question, just observing :-)
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "Apathy on the individual level translates to insanity on the mass level" |
| - Douglas R. Hofstadter |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Disclaimer: I don't represent Ashmount UK's opinions, only my own.
Wolfram Schlickenrieder (KSC)
p...@panix.com (Philip Elmer-DeWitt) writes:
> ... I feel obliged to point out that TIME is protected by copyright
> and that this article has been reprinted without permission.
I can't see anything printed here...
> Using the Internet and anonymous services to violate copyright laws
> is not going to do any of us any good.
> Phil Elmer-DeWitt TIME
What would you say is wrong with making you article more widely
available than you expected? (...and I don't want to hear any of this
ridiculous law business...)
Wolf
Wolfram Schlickenrieder (KSC)
vi...@owlnet.rice.edu (Vivek Sadananda Pai) writes:
> ... - if everyone pirated Time, and Time subscriptions fell below
> the threshold needed to keep it going, it would shut down. Then
> where do you propose to get your information?
So what is your guess about how much of the information available in
the net is "stolen" (ha!) from TIME?
Wolf
Doug Frick
IMHO, information should be created. What's at stake here is the right
of "Phil Elmer-DeWitt, TIME" to profit from his effort in writing such
an article. Because if the ability to profit from such activities is
removed, information will be both free and scarce. Copyright laws serve
to make the consumption of information a bi-directional transfer of value.
What is needed is a situation that permits authors publishing in an
electronic medium to be fairly compensated for their efforts, while
recognizing that the cost of publishing electronically is significantly
cheaper than the cost of publishing on paper. After all, how much did
Mr. Elmer-DeWitt make per copy of that issue of TIME sold? Not much,
I'll bet.
--
Doug Frick
dfr...@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.edu
Markmiester
>From: Mats Bergstrom <ma...@sos.sll.se>
>Subject: Re: TIME: FIRST NATION IN CYBERSPACE
>To: eff-...@eff.org (eff-talk mailing list)
>
>
>> Using the Internet and anonymous services to violate
>> copyright laws is not going to do any of us any good.
>> Phil Elmer-DeWitt
>> TIME
>
> article and I never read Time.
>
>
month from now. Subscribing to a magazine would be kind of a big hassel,
and here in Ephraim Utah, I do not really think they sell Time Magazine in
our small book store. I loved your article, I am almost about to just
subscribe and let you guys worry about where I am living. (As long as it
gets sent to me..). I think it did a lot of good, it might of got yourself
a new customer.
---MarkMiester
_______________________________________
"Who will need more than 640k anyways?"
-Bill Gates, 1980
Dragon
>As a paying subscriber of Time magazine and a strong
>supporter of intellectual property laws, I think the
>idea of "liberating" information is a bunch of crap.
>It's plain and simple theft, and it inevitably leads
>to the lack of new information - if everyone pirated
>Time, and Time subscriptions fell below the threshold
>needed to keep it going, it would shut down. Then
>where do you propose to get your information?
>
>People who will be making their lives from manufacturing
>intellectual property (and I assume you fall into that
>category) should realize that this theft may one day affect
>you personally.
I do not currently subscribe to Time magazine. Therefore,
I would not normally have seen this article, nor would
Time have received any money from me or would I have been
counted as a "reader". However, having read this article,
and enjoying it greatly, there is a better possibility that
in the future, when buying a magazine, I may thumb through
Time, and possibly buy it. The net gain is positive.
I doubt that anyone will cancel their subscription to
Time magazine simply because an occasional article is
published on the net. However, Time does gain exposure
from their article appearing here. It is, in essense,
free advertising. It is likely that some of the people
who read the article will be interested enough to buy
copies of Time in the future.
On the other hand, if that occasional articles that do
get posted here are all that Time has of interest,
then clearly there would be no incentive to subscribe.
However, that would be Time's fault, not mine.
William
David Lesher
# I am a poor college student, and I am not sure that I will be where I am a
# month from now. Subscribing to a magazine would be kind of a big hassel,
# and here in Ephraim Utah, I do not really think they sell Time Magazine in
# our small book store.
There is a AMAZING invention out there that resolves this
problem. It has far more POP's than even netcom, much less psi.
Far more bandwidth & storage than uunet....
It's called a public library. It even has interactive help,
with a real simple user interface, the librarian.
I recommned it to all those who are so net-bound they've
forgotten about it......
--
A host is a host from coast to coast..wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu
& no one will talk to a host that's close............(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
Andrew B Stellman
NATION IN C.. by Dra...@CS.Arizona.EDU
> Time magazine simply because an occasional article is
> published on the net. However, Time does gain exposure
> from their article appearing here. It is, in essense,
> free advertising. It is likely that some of the people
> who read the article will be interested enough to buy
> copies of Time in the future.
Maybe it's an article here and an article there at this
point, but in the future entire periodicals could be posted
somewhere on the net. If I see this month's copy of Time
posted somewhere in its entirety (including GIFs of the
illustrations) which, as someone pointed out, is not an
unreasonable thing within a few years (due to high-speed
high-accuracy OCR that might actually happen in the next
decade or so [we hope]), I'm not actually going to get off
my ass and buy the magazine.
Excerpts from netnews.alt.best.of.internet: 6-Dec-93 Re: TIME: FIRST
NATION IN C.. by "bob dick"@psych.psy.uq.
>It seems to me that some people who write, do so to earn a living.
>I think some way needs to be found of enabling that to continue.
>
>I also think that the use of copyright has serious disadvantages.
>In particular, ideas are too important to do anything which
>limits their circulation. Somehow, it seems desirable to find
>a way to reward writers without limiting information flow.
Organizations such as clarinet, which run a subscription-only
site-wide service will still hire writers. Currently they run
syndicated features such as Dave Barry and Miss Manners, which
receive royalties from the sites that carry Clarinet.
I agree about the copyright laws. I see them as a form of giving
credit where credit is due, and protection against information
theft (i.e. taking credit for someone else's work).
---
Personally, I support the idea of creating for creativity's
sake, and I see unlimited redistribution of all information
as an end towards that means. Also, in an ideal society,
people would create new ideas and information at no cost,
purely for the sake of creating.
However, in our society, we have coupled creativity to an
invariable price tag.
I have a story to relate: I play in a local Pittsburgh band.
We put on a free concert a few weeks ago. It was fun for us,
and the people who attended enjoyed it. A few days later, a
friend came up to me and said that he didn't like the idea of
us playing a free concert. The people who ran the place where
we gave the concert had apparently asked my friend if his
band would play for free.
My friend told me that I shouldn't give free concerts,
because people will get used to not paying musicians for
their music.
Draw your own conclusions.
Andy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|
Andrew Stellman | "so like there i was there i was there i was |
r...@cmu.edu | in wean lobby |
read alt.spleen | so like i was with john and he asked: I wonder if this |
be kind to frogs| coffee is free. I asked the coffee people if it was |
be mister gooble| free. They looked very confused." -- sg3y@andrew |
________________|_________________________________________________________|
Olaf Titz
Dragon <wil...@CS.Arizona.EDU> wrote:
> In article <CHJAr...@rice.edu>, [attribution lost] writes:
> >People who will be making their lives from manufacturing
> >intellectual property (and I assume you fall into that
> >category) should realize that this theft may one day affect
> >you personally.
Perhaps writers should redefine their position away from
"manufacturers of intellectual property".
> I doubt that anyone will cancel their subscription to
> Time magazine simply because an occasional article is
> published on the net. However, Time does gain exposure
> from their article appearing here. It is, in essense,
> free advertising. It is likely that some of the people
> who read the article will be interested enough to buy
> copies of Time in the future.
I *am* a TIME subscriber and have actually read the article in
question in the magazine before I've seen it here, and I can confirm
this. A few reposted articles would surely not incite me to cancel my
subscription, but if I read good pieces from a magazine here, I would
perhaps buy the paper (instead of getting through the hassle of
printing the whole thing out and reading it in the ugly, tiny typeface
produced by our laserprinters and still missing pictures or
inserts...)
One reason is that this was a rather short article, compared to many
multiple-page features to be found regularly in TIME, and it was still
too much for reading on the tube. Paper has its place, after all.
> On the other hand, if that occasional articles that do
> get posted here are all that Time has of interest,
> then clearly there would be no incentive to subscribe.
> However, that would be Time's fault, not mine.
I assume TIME would need to get *much* worse than it's now for this to
occur. IMHO all of TIME, TIME's readership and net.people can live
with a few interest-critical (:-) articles getting reposted.
Olaf
--
olaf titz o ol...@bigred.ka.sub.org praetorius@irc
comp.sc.student _>\ _ s_t...@ira.uka.de LINUX - the choice
karlsruhe germany (_)<(_) uk...@dkauni2.bitnet of a GNU generation
what good is a photograph of you? everytime i look at it it makes me feel blue
Bruce E Johnson
Andrew B Stellman <ro...@CMU.EDU> wrote:
[stuff deleted]
>I agree about the copyright laws. I see them as a form of giving
>credit where credit is due, and protection against information
>theft (i.e. taking credit for someone else's work).
>Personally, I support the idea of creating for creativity's
>sake, and I see unlimited redistribution of all information
>as an end towards that means. Also, in an ideal society,
>people would create new ideas and information at no cost,
>purely for the sake of creating.
>
>However, in our society, we have coupled creativity to an
>invariable price tag.
Hardly...In our society we have coupled silly, non-creative things
like eating, and a roof over our heads to an 'inevitable' price tag. Your
'glorious' vision of an ideal society just put creativity permanently into
a second rate occupation, because, people have these basic needs that must
be met, and if, for instance, writers or musicians can't get paid for
their work, the energy they put into their creative work will have to go
into their real jobs, and essentially only the independently wealthy will
be able to afford the time to get good at it. Copyright laws and the
price put on information in our society are the factors that have helped
create the explosion of information that we are now experiencing, not
merely 'art for arts sake'.
>
[story about free concert deleted]
>
>My friend told me that I shouldn't give free concerts,
>because people will get used to not paying musicians for
>their music.
>
>Draw your own conclusions.
My conclusions are that your friend has no real idea of how the
real world really works...if people see a band for free, and like them,
they're actually going to be willing to pay more to see them again than if
they had never heard them before. This is, in principle, how the
Gillette company made itself...they gave razors away. People
certainly did'nt then expect to pay nothing for the blades, and any
other of a number of freebies that any other of a number of companies
put out all the time, in anticipation of further business. Free concerts
are a long used method of getting more exposure for a band, in
anticipation of getting bookings, or recording contracts. If on the other
hand, you can afford to play free all the time, more power to you, go
ahead, 'people' aren't so dumb that they'll think that ALL bands will do
this.
Bruce Johnson
bob dick
It seems to me that some people who write, do so to earn a living.
I think some way needs to be found of enabling that to continue.
I also think that the use of copyright has serious disadvantages.
In particular, ideas are too important to do anything which
limits their circulation. Somehow, it seems desirable to find
a way to reward writers without limiting information flow.
The curious thing is, I don't think the publishers would be
harmed, in many instances, if they waived copyright sometimes.
I have a small desktop publishing company to publish my own
material, and I include a copyright waiver on all publications.
I suspect that this leads to the material having wider currency
than otherwise.
-- Bob
--
|||| Bob Dick Psychology Univ of Queensland 4072
|||| b...@psych.psy.uq.oz.au voice +617 365 6421
Brent C.J. Britton
>In article <2do7r6$h...@panix.com> p...@panix.com (Philip Elmer-DeWitt) writes:
>>Flattered as I am to see my article appear hear, I feel obliged to point
>>out that TIME is protected by copyright and that this article has been
>>reprinted without permission.
>
>I heartily respect your concern, but did you *really* expect anything else?
>I'd grin and bear it if I were you: otherwise you'll be submerged by various
>netters who castigate Time-Warner for trying to restrict information to those
>with more money or whatever. Ask not what the net can do for you, but what
>you can do for the net.
Communist.
Ahem... sorry. Let me rephrase.
I beg to differ with your opinion. Intellectual property law may someday
need to bend to accomodate our little electronic world here. But I
suspect (and hope wholeheartedly) that wholesale copying of another's
literary works such as our anonymous friend has visited upon Mr.
Elmer-DeWitt and Time magazine will remain forever off limits.
Anyone who advocates otherwise is, quite frankly, out of touch with
reality. I hope the idiot gets busted.
flame off,
-brent
--
---
Brent C.J. Britton <br...@media-lab.media.mit.edu> 617-536-4654
"I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man." -- Publius
W.P. Fleischmann
> supporter of intellectual property laws, I think the
> idea of "liberating" information is a bunch of crap.
> It's plain and simple theft, and it inevitably leads
> to the lack of new information - if everyone pirated
> Time, and Time subscriptions fell below the threshold
> needed to keep it going, it would shut down. Then
> where do you propose to get your information?
Funny, it was the lack of new information that brought
me to *drop* my subscription to Time(c).
Really.
W.P. Fleischmann Internet: Bill.Fle...@med.umich.edu
Dept of Anesthesiology William.F...@um.cc.umich.edu
CFOB, room B4961 fle...@umich.edu
University of Michigan CIS: 76256,252
Ann Arbor, Mi 48109-0704
Antonio Quinonez
>It seems to me that some people who write, do so to earn a living.
>I think some way needs to be found of enabling that to continue.
-these people who "write..to earn a living" represent a proffesion
and not some government or privately subsidized welfare state.
>I also think that the use of copyright has serious disadvantages.
>In particular, ideas are too important to do anything which
>limits their circulation.
if you thinki ideas are of such great importance, than why
dont you go out and plop down the 3 dollars and purchase the magazine.
Somehow, it seems desirable to find
>a way to reward writers without limiting information flow.
-purchase their material.
>
>The curious thing is, I don't think the publishers would be
>harmed, in many instances, if they waived copyright sometimes.
if someone were to use my material without my permission and
warped it to fit a particular context...or some other use i was
opposed to...you bet it would undermine me.
ATTENTION: TIME MAGAZINE SUPPORTS THE SLAUGHTER OF GAYS...
slight of hand manipulation of IDEA ahead.
>I have a small desktop publishing company to publish my own
>material, and I include a copyright waiver on all publications.
>I suspect that this leads to the material having wider currency
>than otherwise.
i am glad that you see it this way. but the matter still rests on
their being a number of publishers and writers who can depend
on their own machine for distribution of ideas and they dont
need entrepeneurs with a mac to achieve this--especially those who
do so without permission.
AQ
--
"Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!"
-- W. C. Fields
Matthew Holiday
-> In article <2dprbk$a...@agate.berkeley.edu> h...@soda.berkeley.edu (Eric Hollander) writes:
-> >In article <2do7r6$h...@panix.com>, Philip Elmer-DeWitt <p...@panix.com> wrote:
-> >>Flattered as I am to see my article appear hear, I feel obliged to point
-> >>out that TIME is protected by copyright and that this article has been
-> >>reprinted without permission. Using the Internet and anonymous services to
-> >>violate copyright laws is not going to do any of us any good.
-> >>Phil Elmer-DeWitt
-> >>TIME
-> >
-> >Information should be free. Copyright laws are no longer serving to make
-> >the world a better place. But in any case, they are no longer enforcable,
-> >what with the spread of the 'net and cheap, high-acuracy OCR. We need to
-> >find a better system. There's far too much information out there for paper
-> >to be an effective storage and retreival system.
->
-> IMHO, information should be created. What's at stake here is the right
-> of "Phil Elmer-DeWitt, TIME" to profit from his effort in writing such
-> an article. Because if the ability to profit from such activities is
-> removed, information will be both free and scarce. Copyright laws serve
-> to make the consumption of information a bi-directional transfer of value.
->
-> What is needed is a situation that permits authors publishing in an
-> electronic medium to be fairly compensated for their efforts, while
-> recognizing that the cost of publishing electronically is significantly
-> cheaper than the cost of publishing on paper. After all, how much did
-> Mr. Elmer-DeWitt make per copy of that issue of TIME sold? Not much,
-> I'll bet.
One method of compensation being discussed is a tax on Internet use to repay
authors/publishers for revenue lost through copyright infringement. It would
be a lot like the "contributions" movie studios have been trying to get from
VCR manufacturers as compensation for pirated films -- everybody pirates, so
just collect the $$ up front and quit trying to prosecute the offenders. The
alternative may be a massive lawsuit by authors/publishers against the Inter-
net, one which might have a significant impact on all us stainless steel rats.
--
Matt Holiday #include <std/disclaimer>
hol...@bnr.ca
BNR Richardson, TX "Proud owner of an unregistered computer"
Jacob Mandelson
>In article <1993Dec6.0...@news.media.mit.edu>,
>Brent C.J. Britton <br...@media.mit.edu> wrote:
>>Communist.
>>
>>Ahem... sorry. Let me rephrase.
>Sir,
>No need to rephrase. "Communist" is exactly the right word. The point is
>that the system of capitalism works really well with physical goods, like
>laser printers, for instance, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to treat
>information the same way. It's possible to make unlimitted copies of
^^^^^^
Yes, it is possible to make unlimited copies of information already
produced, but where do you think that information comes from originally?
Human labor, just like laser printers and other physical goods. You can
make unlimited copies of a computer program, but if no one pays the
programmer, no programs get written. News articles are exactly the same.
It takes effort to do the research and write up the article, and if the
article is distributed without any payment to the author, then there is no
motivation to write. We'd be left with magizines like TIME producing drivel
on par with broadcast television, if they even survived.
Kyle Cassidy
>NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu
>In article <2do7r6$h...@panix.com>, Philip Elmer-DeWitt <p...@panix.com> wrote:
>>Flattered as I am to see my article appear hear, I feel obliged to point
>>out that TIME is protected by copyright and that this article has been
>>reprinted without permission. Using the Internet and anonymous services to
>>violate copyright laws is not going to do any of us any good.
>>Phil Elmer-DeWitt
>>TIME
>
>Information should be free. Copyright laws are no longer serving to make
>the world a better place. But in any case, they are no longer enforcable,
oh false! that sort of thinking is exactly what starved edgar allan poe to
death. he was paid $60 for 'the raven' which became one of the most
successful poems in the world while he was alive, but because of inadequate
copyright laws he got zilch from it.
Terry Tao
>
>Irrespective of whether it's right or wrong, I think out concept of
>"copyright" and "intellectual property" are going to be *forced* to change
>as networks become a larger part of our society. Our current copyright
>system is based on product - it works because anything you write or draw or
>compose needs to be distributed, and up until now that meant putting it on
>paper or tape or whatever, and selling a *product*. Yes, some people will
>copy it, but the resources needed to make a copy so far outweigh the
>information that this will be a limited activity. And anyone who decides
>to copy it on a large enough scale that it is worth their effort will be
>involved in a large enough operation that they are very vulnerable to laws
>the government puts in place.
>
>Now, we are creating a new medium in which *copying* is an intrinsic
>property. Sure, you can try to create copy protection or other ways to
>protect our traditional structure, but all of them will fighting a loosing
>battle against the natural properties of the medium they are on.
>
Actually, this probably won't be the case. Look at the impact of the
introduction of mass media - radio and television. Now anybody can rig up
a radio or a television to recieve a station, without having to pay
anything toward that particular station. However, the stations have to
have revenue to operate, and so now we have commercials and advertising.
(As well as government sponsored stations, but that's another matter).
Nevertheless, the quality of television news and documentaries is, if
anyone has noticed, somewhat inferior to the same kind of information you
find in newspapers, magazines, and books. Mass media that is dependent on
advertising will tend to air shows that give the best ratings for the
cheapest price, whereas a select magazine can raise prices and have better
quality products. A niche for both the mass-produced, low-quality
information and the expensive, high-quality information.
If the internet and improving technology eventually makes magazines, books,
and newspapers easily scannable and copied onto the net (with computer
algorithms to remove advertising, and so forth), then those media services
will be effectively killed. (Besides, advertisers and propogandists will
(already have?) attack the internet directly.) News that can be cheaply
obtained will still be posted to the internet, no doubt. But expensively
obtained information (and a lot of information is expensive: researchers
and thorough reporters have to get paid. It's only because the user-pays
system divides the cost among all consumers that we don't notice) will
still find a niche in other media that cannot be so easily copied: for
example, the newspaper of the future might e-mail its subscribers
personalized, encrypted, and interactive news: or alternatively, a
subscriber will, upon paying the subscription fee, gain an account and
telnet access to the news site, where he or she can interactively scan the
news database. (Such things already exist, of course. :-)
Basically, I think that as the internet grows, there will be a great spread
of low and medium-quality information: rumors, debate, clarinet-style
information, shareware, and so forth, and the amount of high-quality
information (textbooks, specialized magazines, thorough analysis and
reports) will decline, but survive, possibly in a very different fashion
from now.
--
Terry Tao Math Dept., Princeton University (t...@math.princeton.edu)
"Occasionally the non-empty case is more interesting than the empty case."
- Schneeberger on set theory
Jester
>> ... I feel obliged to point out that TIME is protected by copyright
>> and that this article has been reprinted without permission.
>> Using the Internet and anonymous services to violate copyright laws
>> is not going to do any of us any good.
>> Phil Elmer-DeWitt TIME
Um, do you mean to tell me that Time magazine is going to invest
thousands of dollars in court time, just to have it get taken all the
way to the Supreme Court to make a landmark decision on the freedom of
speech in electronic means, and copyright laws. I think not. And until
that time, I and others like me will continue to spend our time typing
in such articles to share with the net community at large.
No, I did not post the Time article, but I have posted Mondo 2000
articles, AP news articles, and local news articles to the net for those
to read, who do not have access to such medium any other way.
Jester
--
Join the Omnipotent Overlords of the Omniverse today. Add to intelligent
political, environmental, and social discussions. Buck the growing trend of
apathy in the world today, and most importantly have some well earned fun.
Read all about us on alt.overlords or e-mail : jes...@sage.cc.purdue.edu
Gary L Snethen
>One method of compensation being discussed is a tax on Internet use to repay
>authors/publishers for revenue lost through copyright infringement. It would
>be a lot like the "contributions" movie studios have been trying to get from
>VCR manufacturers as compensation for pirated films -- everybody pirates, so
>just collect the $$ up front and quit trying to prosecute the offenders. The
>alternative may be a massive lawsuit by authors/publishers against the Inter-
>net, one which might have a significant impact on all us stainless steel rats.
So what would have happen if VCRs were invented before movies? Would the
motion picture production companies then have to pay a tax to VCR
manufacturers for drawing people who would otherwise have bought VCRs into
theatres where they could all watch films simultaneously on one VCR?
It seems to me that I should be able to collect a similar tax from all
airlines, car manufacturers, etc. for my statistical likelihood of being
injured or even killed in an accident caused by a fault in their equipment.
:)
Steve Turner
EH> In article <1993Dec6.0...@news.media.mit.edu>,
EH> Brent C.J. Britton <br...@media.mit.edu> wrote:
>Communist.
>
>Ahem... sorry. Let me rephrase.
EH> Sir,
EH> No need to rephrase. "Communist" is exactly the right word. The point is
EH> that the system of capitalism works really well with physical goods, like
EH> laser printers, for instance, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to treat
EH> information the same way. It's possible to make unlimitted copies of
EH> information in digital form, like an article in TIME, at almost no cost.
EH> This is not true of laser printers. The graph of product cost vs units
EH> produced for things like laser printers looks very different from the graph
EH> for information. The first laser printer costs about $1mil or whatever for
EH> R&D. The millionth laser printer costs about $500, and the R&D is somewhat
EH> spread out over all the units produced.
EH> The same graph for (digital form) information is radically
EH> different. The first copy of Microsoft Word costed $1mil (or
EH> something). Every single copy after that costs $0. There's a big
EH> difference.
I disagree with this last. It's not so black-and-white as you
pretend. How much of the $2k you pay for a laser printer goes towards
the R&D (information) cost, and how much for the hardware? Even
today, hundreds of products have an inextricable mixture of
"soft" information elements and "hard" material elements.
As a simple example: Intel's 486 DX and SX models. The SX is just the
DX with the FPU disabled, so the "material" cost is the same. So,
should we grant Intel a bunch up front to develop the first 486, and
then give everyone DX's for the price of the manufacturing process?
After all, it's only the information cost of the original R&D that
they're trying to recover by charging more. But wait! It turns out
that Intel uses 486's that fail their FPU functionality tests as SX's,
so in fact the underlying chips *aren't* the same - hmmm, that gets
tougher, no? Now, consider how much of the "manufacturing" cost
involves the expense of developing the process technology, etc, and
we're back to deciding it's all information.
Idealists who think that information should be free to all with no
restrictions have no conception of how many purchases involve an
information exchange.
--
Steve Turner - Sailor on the Silicon Prairie (UIUC/CSRD)
s...@uiuc.edu Phone: (217) 244-5979 or (217) 355-8248
Steve Turner
> Using the Internet and anonymous services to violate copyright laws
> is not going to do any of us any good.
> Phil Elmer-DeWitt TIME
WS> What would you say is wrong with making you article more widely
WS> available than you expected? (...and I don't want to hear any of this
WS> ridiculous law business...)
Sorry to say, even in Germany you've got to put up with laws, no
matter how ridiculous. The posting was wrong because it's stupidity
like that which is going to cause the powers that be to shut down the
free exchange of information we've all enjoyed so far.
If idiots don't quit abusing this wonderful place called the Internet,
it's going to get taken over by a bunch of narrow-minded corporate
censors.
(I'm not saying that the people who want to tell us all what to say
have the right to do so. I am saying that they do have the power to
take this thing away from us, so we'd better be careful not to give
them excuses to do so.)
The way to fight for freedom of expression is to work to put people in
power who respect that freedom.
It is *not* by pretending you're making some big statement by
violating a law. You're doing so at their suffrance, remember. If
the powers that be want to shut this all down, they can do it.
Happily, so far they haven't seen much need to. We're like a gnat
buzzing in the ear of the media-houses. They could easily smash us if
they wanted to, but it isn't worth boxing their own ear to get rid of
an annoyance. If we insist on making a pain of ourselves, they'll get
tired of it sooner or later and that'll be that. The solution is to
make them see that we're not buzzing around uselessly, but rather
singing a sweet song.
Eric Hollander
Gary L Snethen <xe...@iastate.edu> wrote:
>In <2e0ajk$a...@crchh327.bnr.ca> hol...@bnr.ca (Matthew Holiday) writes:
>>One method of compensation being discussed is a tax on Internet use to repay
>>authors/publishers for revenue lost through copyright infringement. It would
>>be a lot like the "contributions" movie studios have been trying to get from
>>VCR manufacturers as compensation for pirated films -- everybody pirates, so
>>just collect the $$ up front and quit trying to prosecute the offenders. The
>>alternative may be a massive lawsuit by authors/publishers against the Inter-
>>net, one which might have a significant impact on all us stainless steel rats.
That's a good idea. Why not take it a step further and instead of paying
for copyright infringement, just make the tax high enough to pay for the
whole thing. It only makes sense for people who own hardware capable of
viewing and reproducing information should pay for the creatiion of that
information. After all, who else could possible consume or use that
information?
e
Eric Hollander
Jacob Mandelson <j...@cco.caltech.edu> wrote:
>Yes, it is possible to make unlimited copies of information already
>produced, but where do you think that information comes from originally?
>Human labor, just like laser printers and other physical goods. You can
>make unlimited copies of a computer program, but if no one pays the
>programmer, no programs get written. News articles are exactly the same.
>It takes effort to do the research and write up the article, and if the
>article is distributed without any payment to the author, then there is no
>motivation to write. We'd be left with magizines like TIME producing drivel
>on par with broadcast television, if they even survived.
Read the rest of my post. Any system which didn't provide (financial)
rewards to people creating information would be a total failure. Abolition
of copyright laws without implementing some other replacement system would
be a disaster.
Like I said, the people who produce TIME should be paid fairly for their
efforts. What I'm trying to say is that having them be paid fairly is not
incompatible with everyone having free access to their information.
The same is not true of laser printers. There's no physically possible
economic system that would be able to make physical goods like laser
printers freely available to everyone on demand (unless you believe that
nanotech will do that, but that's another issue).
e
benjamin franz
[deletia]
: # and here in Ephraim Utah, I do not really think they sell Time Magazine in
: # our small book store.
: There is a AMAZING invention out there that resolves this
: problem. It has far more POP's than even netcom, much less psi.
: Far more bandwidth & storage than uunet....
: It's called a public library. It even has interactive help,
: with a real simple user interface, the librarian.
: I recommned it to all those who are so net-bound they've
: forgotten about it......
For those who have not lived in *rural* Utah: Not every small town *has* a
library.
--
benjami...@m.cc.utah.edu
Sometimes you've just gotta pull down your pants and slide on the ice.
Chris _ Roberts
>Sorry to say, even in Germany you've got to put up with laws, no
>matter how ridiculous. The posting was wrong because it's stupidity
>like that which is going to cause the powers that be to shut down the
>free exchange of information we've all enjoyed so far.
>
>If idiots don't quit abusing this wonderful place called the Internet,
>it's going to get taken over by a bunch of narrow-minded corporat
Was it not the TIME article itself that claimed even if somebody wanted
to, they could not shut down the Internet?
Chris
e
--
Plastic Man
to this newgroup, and the internet:
(1) (as background info.) I recieve *many* periodicals, but only on a
'qualifying for free subscription' basis. Very occasionally I will buy
a issue of a periodical which catches my eye.
(2) I used to think of myself as a reasonably heavy private user of certain
'pay as you retrieve' services. Thousands of $ hard earned have gone this
way.
(3) The 'net is different - yesterday I spent 14 hours retrieving and
digesting, and I've virtually stopped using certain 'pay as you retrieve'
services.
What does this say? The word madness springs to mind - I hadn't connected (1)
and (2) until now! But I can rationalise that by remembering how *messy* paper
is - well over 50% of those 'free' periodicals don't even get unwrapped,
depending on what I'm interested in at the time. As a representative sample of
humanity, I hope this helps!
--
Plastic Man
Steve Pope
> somebody wanted to, they could not shut down the Internet?
Yes and no.
The article said this at some point; but then later it said that
one possible outcome of the planned exit of the government
from the net's central management was that somebody would
gain control and "turn it into a giant compuserve".
Bleah.
Steve
Dwight Ernest
>p...@panix.com (Philip Elmer-DeWitt) writes:
> > Flattered as I am to see my article appear hear, I feel obliged to point
> > out that TIME is protected by copyright and that this article has been
> > reprinted without permission. Using the Internet and anonymous services to
> > violate copyright laws is not going to do any of us any good.
> > Phil Elmer-DeWitt
> > TIME
[...]
>The curious thing is, I don't think the publishers would be
>harmed, in many instances, if they waived copyright sometimes.
If the poster had *asked* Time-Warner for permission, and it was
indeed given, there'd have been no infringement. An assumption
that Time would not have agreed, and that therefore one shouldn't
even bother to ask, is juvenile and possibly -- just possibly,
mind -- inaccurate.
(I'm a Time Inc. Magazines systems staff alumnus)
Jacob Mandelson
And just how do they get paid if the information they produce is "free?"
Taxes perhaps? Well, not only is the information no longer "free" (we're
paying an information tax.) but also we have the entire population subsidizing
the small fraction that is on the net. Why should the vast majority of
the population pay to give the internet free information? Information is
valuable (otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion). People who
consume information should have to pay for it, not have their information
subsidized.
Consider what TIME would be like under your subsidized "free" information
scenario: Everyone on a sizable computer network would get TIME for
virtually nothing. Most of the rest of the nation would have to pay the
information tax and the publishing costs (probably inflated, to make up for
TIME's decreased [physical] circulation).
Sure it costs very little to sent a magizine article across the internet,
but the people who write that article are still producing a good/performing
a serivce, AND the people who _read_ the article are consuming the good/service.
The consumers of information should have to pay for it, just like the
consumers of every other commidity under the sun. I see no reason for
information consumption to be subsidized.
Eric Hollander
Jacob Mandelson <j...@cco.caltech.edu> wrote:
>And just how do they get paid if the information they produce is "free?"
>Taxes perhaps? Well, not only is the information no longer "free" (we're
I specifically mentioned taxes in my post. It would be "free" only in the
sense that the roads are free; they are actually paid for by taxes.
Obviously, nothing is free. If something is valuable, people probably had
to put some effort into making it, and they need to make a living, so it
can't be free. Note that in my post I specifically refered to a "hardware
tax". People buying computer hardware should pay for info creation, just
like people buying cars pay a liscence tax which goes to road building.
>paying an information tax.) but also we have the entire population subsidizing
>the small fraction that is on the net. Why should the vast majority of
>the population pay to give the internet free information? Information is
>valuable (otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion). People who
>consume information should have to pay for it, not have their information
>subsidized.
This is true. If only a small portion of the population is in a position to
receive things in digital form over the net, and the whole population
subsidized it, this whole thing wouldn't make any sense. Two of my
premises are a) the money should come from a hardware tax, so only people
who own hardware will pay it, and b) this whole thing really only makes
sense if everyone is on the net. This isn't the case yet, but it will be
soon. I'm told that the new home game machines may have some net
capabilities built in.
>Consider what TIME would be like under your subsidized "free" information
>scenario: Everyone on a sizable computer network would get TIME for
>virtually nothing. Most of the rest of the nation would have to pay the
>information tax and the publishing costs (probably inflated, to make up for
>TIME's decreased [physical] circulation).
Again, my proposed tax doesn't make any sense unless almost everyone is on
the net.
>Sure it costs very little to sent a magizine article across the internet,
>but the people who write that article are still producing a good/performing
>a serivce, AND the people who _read_ the article are consuming the good/service.
>The consumers of information should have to pay for it, just like the
>consumers of every other commidity under the sun. I see no reason for
>information consumption to be subsidized.
The consumers of information definitely should pay for it. The point I'm
making is that we are all potential consumers of that information, so we
should all pay for it. Maybe I don't actually read TIME (I don't), but I
would still be glad to pay for its production, if I knew that other people
who don't read _Motorcyclist_ (which I do read) are paying for its
production.
It seems likely that people would consume information in some correlation to
the type of hardware they have. A Cray owner is going to consume some
complex, large software, and so he should pay a higher tax percentage.
Someone who has something like a cheap, dedicated, networked electronic book
reader (these don't really exist yet, but might soon) should pay a smaller
percentage. This is a progressive tax, just like any other progressive
tax. It's the same idea as vehicle taxes. A passenger car owner pays less
tax than a semitruck owner, because it's assumed that the owner of a
passenger car uses the roads less than the owner of a semitruck. (Note that
no vehicle owner uses _all_ the roads, so vehicle registration taxes go
mostly to pay for roads you will never ride on.)
e
Brent C.J. Britton
>Um, do you mean to tell me that Time magazine is going to invest
>thousands of dollars in court time, just to have it get taken all the
>way to the Supreme Court to make a landmark decision on the freedom of
>speech in electronic means, and copyright laws. I think not. And until
>that time, I and others like me will continue to spend our time typing
>in such articles to share with the net community at large.
Curious that you dismiss the possibility of a lawsuit so readily. You're
probably right, of course, but only because the copying problem hasn't
yet gotten serious enough for the likes of Time-Warner to care much.
Yet... much.
But jeez, Jest (may I call you Jest?) someone *will* get their pants sued
off one of these days, and I'd say yer looking like a prime candidate
there, dude. The admissions you made in this article alone are enough
to show willfullness, which can result in treble damages. $kaching$
Then of course there's the fact that every illicit act of coping you
effect (or cause to be effected, like on every machine to which every
copy propagates) is a seperate infringement by which to further multiply
the damages. $kaching$
See... you take yer lost profits (pretty minimal I'd guess), *or* yer
reasonable usage fee (aha! what does a mag like Time charge for
reprints?) and you multiply that by the number of infringing acts
(eek!) and then triple it. Then toss in court costs and attorney's
fees.
$$Kaaa-Ching!$$ Still feeling rebellious?
Don't go messin yer pants over some hifalutin supreme court case either,
cuz this one wouldn't make it... yer constitutional right to infringe
thesis notwithstanding. I can just imagine the size of the brick that
yer basic Federal Judge (who pays damn good money for his subscription to
Time magazine and doesn't much care for the idea of all us ne'erdowells
snarfing it for free) would shit when he here's things like "the
defendant made at least 3 million copies and distributed them worldwide
to at least 30 million people." Har... can you say Summary Judgement?
Ok I know I know... they won't sue you because yer pockets just don't run
that deep and getting their money would be like trying to find good
advice on the net (ha! I slay me...) So maybe they'll sue your
sysadmin (Purdue?), or the anonymous posting service, or the entire
country of Finland, or the whole damn net maybe. They'll sue someone who
does have a little coinage, eventually, and I'll betcha the loss of that
coinage will be juuust irksome enough for that person to throw the switch
on the whole infringin' bunch of us.
Either way everything gets all riiiiled up, knowutamean? Which might be
just dandy if you dig entropy, but me I just want to read my news in
peace sorta, and I would not appreciate losing the ability to do that in
the turmoil that will ensue from your pathological need to duplicate
everything in sight!
But I know where you're coming from, dude. You just wanna spread a
little info around... move the bits from the haves to the have-nots...
get that whole lot's-of-stuff-for-everyone-and-all-of-it-free paradigm
entrenched before the bad guys can do anything about it. I can dig it.
Just be sure you don't fuck everything up, ok?
-brent
obd: Last time I checked the various abbreviations that follow my name
around, "J.D." hadn't been installed just yet, so any legal
advice buried in the above missive should be taken with a grain,
nay, a pillar, of salt. Preferably from behind...
Scott Russell
>h...@soda.berkeley.edu (Eric Hollander) writes:
>>In article <1993Dec6.0...@news.media.mit.edu>,
>>Brent C.J. Britton <br...@media.mit.edu> wrote:
>>>Communist.
>>>
>>>Ahem... sorry. Let me rephrase.
>make unlimited copies of a computer program, but if no one pays the
>programmer, no programs get written. News articles are exactly the same.
HACKERS: heroes of the computer revolution - Levy, Steven ISBN 0-440-13405-6.
(A book I PAID for!)
I can't believe MIT still isn't making Freshmen read the original text on
the Hands On Imperative.
People who LIVE to write will keep on writing, people who LIVE to program
will keep on programming. I think that introducing economics to it really
just produces commercial drivel. Most of the stuff that's worth reading
lately is on the 'net, and very few us are being paid.
... Bruce Umbaugh
Tao) says:
>
>
>Actually, this probably won't be the case. Look at the impact of the
>introduction of mass media - radio and television. Now anybody can rig up
>a radio or a television to recieve a station, without having to pay
>anything toward that particular station. However, the stations have to
>have revenue to operate, and so now we have commercials and advertising.
This is one way for it to work, but not the only way possible, nor
the only way actual. In the UK, owners of television and radio receivers
are required by law to pay a license fee to receive RF signals. Having
grown up with the USA'n system, that has always seemed highly counter-
intuitive to me, and it probably seems that way to you, too. Still, it
is good, when we are reflecting on possible social configurations, to
keep our minds open to a wide range of possible schemes. It increases
the likelihood we'll get one of the right answers, and it helps us not
piss off our British readers. :)
That's no argument about what is better, mind you, only a reminder abourt
possibilia.
Bruce Umbaugh
Philosopher
<<<Wondering who's posting those David Sternlight messages in newsgroup
comp.org.eff.talk since he swore not to read it>>>
Graham Toal
: This is one way for it to work, but not the only way possible, nor
:the only way actual. In the UK, owners of television and radio receivers
:are required by law to pay a license fee to receive RF signals.
Small correction. Only TV signals. They did away with radio licences about
20 years ago. I'm not sure what the position is on Satellite - I've a feeling
they have some protection too (at least regarding encryption).
G
TOM
>People who LIVE to write will keep on writing, people who LIVE to program
>will keep on programming. I think that introducing economics to it really
>just produces commercial drivel. Most of the stuff that's worth reading
>lately is on the 'net, and very few us are being paid.
Clearly a trust fund sort of person here.
How do you propose that the rest of us would get access to computers
and hardware if we weren't able to make money programming? Not that
many people are employed by academia, you know.
There has to be a way to reward people for producing creative work, or
else we are all going to end up working at MacDonalds. Unless you have a
proposal to revamp the economic system first, you have to figure out a way
to keep me and lots of people like me supported and with access to expensive,
specialized hardware, if you want to keep getting new computer programs,
music, writing, art, etc.
Nothing against the Free Software Foundation: if their free product is
better than another expensive one, and it often is, it should succeed.
As someone else on this thread has pointed out, if a small player
with a good idea is to succeed fighting against the giant corporations,
given that s/he doesn't have access to the resources, capital or
distribution that a large company has, hir ONLY PROTECTION is
intellectual property!
Look at Italy: copyright violation is rampant there and thus many
companies don't even both to produce Italian language versions of their
programs!
--
/t
Tom Ritchford Market Vision, 40 Rector Street, NYC 10006
t...@mvision.com (212) 227-1610 (W) (718) 384-5716 (H)
Send your snail mail address for a free subscription to
"The Journal of Pataphysical Reviews"
KaFKA
WB>
WB>
WB> # I am a poor college student, and I am not sure that I will be where I am a
WB> # month from now. Subscribing to a magazine would be kind of a big hassel,
WB> # and here in Ephraim Utah, I do not really think they sell Time Magazine in
WB> # our small book store.
I could buy Time in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, France, The
Netherlands, so I guess it will EVEN be available in Utah.
[STUFF DELETED]
pATRICK
---
Patrick Oonk | "All users are kindly requested not to use this
KA...@DESERT.HACKTIC.NL | coin telephone during prayer time and to attend
Finger ka...@hacktic.nl | congregational prayer on time."
for PGP public key | - Text on phone booths in Saudi Arabia
PAGER: 06-58358511/2/3/4 |
=========== Hacktic Network Foundation: Internet for the people ! ============
я
Andrew Steele
>On 4 Dec 1993, Scott Russell wrote:
>> .......................... Everyone has to understand that copyright
>> laws don't mean much anymore, and work on rebuilding the information
>> infrastructure from that.
> An author writes a would be bestseller. Unfortunately (for him and
> his publisher) the first sold copy is OCRd and sent over the Net
> from the xyz.anon account to the 250.000.000 subscribers of the
> pirate.reading.newbooks group (since it is so good 25.000.000 of
> these actually transfer it to their palmtops for bed reading). The
> author becomes famous but the final selling of 25.000 paper copies
> hardly compensates him for his work (it took him 3 years to write it).
>
> How do we rebuild the infrastructure to prevent the author from starving?
The author will be able to obtain advertising endorsements based on now
being famous.
Of course, big :-) !!
--
Andrew STEELE +-------------------------------------------------+
BHP-IT Newcastle | All that is required for evil to triumph is for |
PO Box 216, | good people to do nothing. |
Hamilton N.S.W. 2303 | -- Edmund Burke |
David Lesher
# In a paranoid rage, David Lesher wrote the following:
Need I say:
I did not say this......
and I don't recall any recent paranoid rages.......
--
A host is a host from coast to coast..wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu
& no one will talk to a host that's close............(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
Jay D. Anderson
[part of article deleted]
>People who LIVE to write will keep on writing, people who LIVE to program
>will keep on programming. I think that introducing economics to it really
>just produces commercial drivel. Most of the stuff that's worth reading
>lately is on the 'net, and very few us are being paid.
I submit that most of what is written on the net is drivel. It takes a lot
of time and effort to find the "stuff that's worth reading," and even then
much of what appears to be authoritative is at best opinions and at worst
disguising some individual's or group's agenda.
Not saying that these descriptions don't fit commercial publications as well,
just that economic factors/market pressures help to define the publication to
the end user, and help to keep the publication concerned about its image in
the eyes of the end user. Individuals on the net have no such concern. Yes,
some users of the net may become familiar with an individual, but the vast
majority of net users are more on the casual side and may never become
familiar with the "fringe" individuals.
Finally, it is frequently better to get dispassionate information that is
created much more readily by a commercial source with paid employees than by
"people who LIVE to write." A dispassionate discourse is more likely to
contain just the facts, as opposed to the opinions that will creep into
writing created by a person who really wants to write about a subject just
for the sake of writing about it.
Economics/market pressure helps to introduce accountability. Ever see the
common disclaimer in public domain software:
THE INFORMATION AND CODE PROVIDED IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY
OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR INSTITUTION BE LIABLE FOR
ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER INCLUDIND DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCINENTAL,
CONSEQUENTIAL, LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS OR SPECIAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF
THE AUTHOR OR INSTITUTION HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGES.
--
Jay D. Anderson jay.an...@hx.deere.com
John Deere Harvester
1100 13th Avenue (309)765-6063
E. Moline, Illinois 61244 FAX: (309)765-9010
R.C. Solly
In article <2e092k$f...@terminator.rs.itd.umich.edu>, W.P. Fleischmann
<fle...@umich.edu> says:
>
>In <CHJAr...@rice.edu> vi...@owlnet.rice.edu (Vivek Sadananda Pai)
>writes:
>>
>> As a paying subscriber of Time magazine and a strong
>> supporter of intellectual property laws, I think the
>> idea of "liberating" information is a bunch of crap.
>> It's plain and simple theft, and it inevitably leads
>> to the lack of new information - if everyone pirated
>> Time, and Time subscriptions fell below the threshold
>> needed to keep it going, it would shut down. Then
>> where do you propose to get your information?
>
>Funny, it was the lack of new information that brought
>me to *drop* my subscription to Time(c).
>
>Really.
Time magazine has and always will collect/format information. They do not
make the news, they only report it. If subscriptions drop it is time to
change their format, i.e. paper to electronic books. That information can
be taken from the magazine (electronic book), reformatted by you and resold
in another form.
R.C."Chuck" Solly |"Money won is twice as sweet as
nu03...@vm1.nodak.edu | money earned"
CIS: 70471,1403 | -Fast Eddie Felson
Voice: 701-237-8946 |
Mike Godwin
Kyle Cassidy <cas...@elan.rowan.edu> wrote:
>>
>>Information should be free. Copyright laws are no longer serving to make
>>the world a better place. But in any case, they are no longer enforcable,
>
>oh false! that sort of thinking is exactly what starved edgar allan poe to
>death. he was paid $60 for 'the raven' which became one of the most
>successful poems in the world while he was alive, but because of inadequate
>copyright laws he got zilch from it.
Ah, this must explain why Poe quit writing after "The Raven."
(But, seriously, Poe probably signed away his copyright to the publisher
of "The Raven." Since a writer can still do this today, I'd say that
Kyle hasn't really pointed out a defect in the copyright law of Poe's
time.
--Mike
--
Mike Godwin, (202) 347-5400 |"And walk among long dappled grass,
mnem...@eff.org | And pluck till time and times are done
Electronic Frontier | The silver apples of the moon,
Foundation | The golden apples of the sun."
Sten Drescher
Hollander> In article <2e17ad$d...@gap.cco.caltech.edu>,
Hollander> Jacob Mandelson <j...@cco.caltech.edu> wrote:
Hollander> The consumers of information definitely should pay for it. The point I'm
Hollander> making is that we are all potential consumers of that information, so we
Hollander> should all pay for it. Maybe I don't actually read TIME (I don't), but I
Hollander> would still be glad to pay for its production, if I knew that other people
Hollander> who don't read _Motorcyclist_ (which I do read) are paying for its
Hollander> production.
Hollander> It seems likely that people would consume information in some correlation to
Hollander> the type of hardware they have. A Cray owner is going to consume some
Hollander> complex, large software, and so he should pay a higher tax percentage.
Hollander> Someone who has something like a cheap, dedicated, networked electronic book
Hollander> reader (these don't really exist yet, but might soon) should pay a smaller
Hollander> percentage. This is a progressive tax, just like any other progressive
Hollander> tax. It's the same idea as vehicle taxes. A passenger car owner pays less
Hollander> tax than a semitruck owner, because it's assumed that the owner of a
Hollander> passenger car uses the roads less than the owner of a semitruck. (Note that
Hollander> no vehicle owner uses _all_ the roads, so vehicle registration taxes go
Hollander> mostly to pay for roads you will never ride on.)
Hollander> e
And who decides which publications get how big a share of your
'taxes'? I don't trust any government, Democrat, Republican, or other,
to decide what is 'worthy' of being funded. Consider the 'censorship'
claims of people who don't get money from the NEA, or who don't like the
strings attached to it. Also consider the repeated investigations into
censorship in Stars and Stripes, the 'official unofficial' newspaper of
the US Armed Forces. If this partially tax supported, nominally
independent publication gets pressured to print the 'correct' view on
the news, how much more pressure will there be on publications which
depend on a burecrat handing them a check. 'Sorry, Mr Schmuck, but we
don't believe that your last issue was well received, so we've reduced
your allocation by 20%. Yes, you can appeal that, but if you do so,
your entire allocation will be held in abeyance until your case is
heard. Oh, the backlog is about 4 months right now.'
Also, your tax progression is backwards. The Cray isn't going
to be sitting there reading Time, it's going to be crunching numbers.
On the other hand, the 'network electronic book reader' has no other
purpose in life but to suck information off the net, and should actually
be paing a HIGHER tax relative to its computational power. The
comparison isn't between a passenger car and a semi, but between a
passenger car and a bulldozer.
--
Sten Drescher s...@floyd.brooks.af.mil
#include <disclaimer.h>
Brent C.J. Britton
>Ah, this must explain why Poe quit writing after "The Raven."
>
>(But, seriously, Poe probably signed away his copyright to the publisher
>of "The Raven." Since a writer can still do this today, I'd say that
>Kyle hasn't really pointed out a defect in the copyright law of Poe's
>time.
Hrmm... actually I think the 1976 act added "termination of transfer"
provisions that weren't around in Poe's day. Basically, if you're a
struggling writer and you transfer your copyrights to your publisher, you
can get them back in 35 years when you're big and famous.
-brent
Mike Godwin
>>Ah, this must explain why Poe quit writing after "The Raven."
>>
>>(But, seriously, Poe probably signed away his copyright to the publisher
>>of "The Raven." Since a writer can still do this today, I'd say that
>>Kyle hasn't really pointed out a defect in the copyright law of Poe's
>>time.
>
>Hrmm... actually I think the 1976 act added "termination of transfer"
>provisions that weren't around in Poe's day. Basically, if you're a
>struggling writer and you transfer your copyrights to your publisher, you
>can get them back in 35 years when you're big and famous.
You're right about the addition to the Copyright Act, but I don't think it
would have helped Poe, who was not a long-lived guy.
Bruce Hayden
>In article <2e5drt$a...@eff.org> mnem...@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>>Ah, this must explain why Poe quit writing after "The Raven."
>>
>>(But, seriously, Poe probably signed away his copyright to the publisher
>>of "The Raven." Since a writer can still do this today, I'd say that
>>Kyle hasn't really pointed out a defect in the copyright law of Poe's
>>time.
>Hrmm... actually I think the 1976 act added "termination of transfer"
>provisions that weren't around in Poe's day. Basically, if you're a
>struggling writer and you transfer your copyrights to your publisher, you
>can get them back in 35 years when you're big and famous.
Actually we have been moving in the opposite direction.
Note that 17 USC 304 which covers this sort of thing only
applies to copyrights in either their first term (a) or
renewal term (b) on January 1, 1978.
Bruce E. Hayden 1720 South Bellaire Street
bha...@csn.org 1100 Colorado Tower Bldg.
(303) 758-8400 Denver, Colorado 80222
Wolfram Schlickenrieder (KSC)
tur...@sp92.csrd.uiuc.edu (Steve Turner) writes:
> Sorry to say, even in Germany you've got to put up with laws, no
> matter how ridiculous. The posting was wrong because it's stupidity
> like that which is going to cause the powers that be to shut down the
> free exchange of information we've all enjoyed so far.
>
> If idiots don't quit abusing this wonderful place called the Internet,
> it's going to get taken over by a bunch of narrow-minded corporate
> censors.
But isn't it the same bunch of narrow-minded wanna-be censors who
define what is abuse and what isn't? Thus, if you aren't
narrow-minded enough already, you will eventually be forced to be?
Doesn't sound like an idea I like.
> (I'm not saying that the people who want to tell us all what to say
> have the right to do so. I am saying that they do have the power to
> take this thing away from us, so we'd better be careful not to give
> them excuses to do so.)
Who has the power? The DOD? If you want to have a net, you can have
it.
> [...] If the powers that be want to shut this all down, they can do
> it. [...] They could easily smash us if they wanted to,[...] If we
> insist on making a pain of ourselves, they'll get tired of it sooner
> or later and that'll be that[...]
A Question: Are you paranoid?
> The solution is to make them see that we're not buzzing around
> uselessly, but rather singing a sweet song.
That surely won't work for a long time. Anyway: I won't be singing a
sweet song, unless I want to.
Wolf
--
In order to be a proper member of a flock of sheep
you have to be a sheep in the first place. (-a.einstein)
Brent C.J. Britton
>(But, seriously, Poe probably signed away his copyright to the publisher
>of "The Raven." Since a writer can still do this today, I'd say that
>Kyle hasn't really pointed out a defect in the copyright law of Poe's
>time.
Then I (brent) wrote:
>Hrmm... actually I think the 1976 act added "termination of transfer"
>provisions that weren't around in Poe's day. Basically, if you're a
>struggling writer and you transfer your copyrights to your publisher, you
>can get them back in 35 years when you're big and famous.
Then Bruce Hayden wrote:
>Actually we have been moving in the opposite direction.
>Note that 17 USC 304 which covers this sort of thing only
>applies to copyrights in either their first term (a) or
>renewal term (b) on January 1, 1978.
Now, I write again: ;)
You're right, but section 304(c) only applies to pre-1978 transfers.
Section 203 establishes a right to terminate transfers or licenses of a
copyright on or after January 1, 1978.
Actually I was wrong about one thing: these provisions *were* around
prior to the '76 Act; see section 24 of the 1909 copyright act.
Followups to misc.int-property. Cheers,
Max Stern
<NU03...@NDSUVM1.BITNET> writes:
>
>Time magazine has and always will collect/format information. They do not
>make the news, they only report it. If subscriptions drop it is time to
>change their format, i.e. paper to electronic books...
I don't know about Time, but Newsweek has *already* announced cd-i
publications incorporating parts of the magazine's print material plus
voice, video, et al. It's enough to make a body go buy a cd drive...
--
|\/| /_\ \/
| | / \ /\ Max....@TorreyPinesCA.ncr.com
Vivek Sadananda Pai
|>
|> In article <2e092k$f...@terminator.rs.itd.umich.edu>, W.P. Fleischmann
|> <fle...@umich.edu> says:
|> >
|> >In <CHJAr...@rice.edu> vi...@owlnet.rice.edu (Vivek Sadananda Pai)
|> >writes:
|> >>
|> >> As a paying subscriber of Time magazine and a strong
|> >> supporter of intellectual property laws, I think the
|> >> idea of "liberating" information is a bunch of crap.
|> >> It's plain and simple theft, and it inevitably leads
|> >> to the lack of new information - if everyone pirated
|> >> Time, and Time subscriptions fell below the threshold
|> >> needed to keep it going, it would shut down. Then
|> >> where do you propose to get your information?
|> >
|> >Funny, it was the lack of new information that brought
|> >me to *drop* my subscription to Time(c).
|> >
|> >Really.
|>
|> Time magazine has and always will collect/format information. They do not
|> make the news, they only report it. If subscriptions drop it is time to
|> change their format, i.e. paper to electronic books. That information can
|> be taken from the magazine (electronic book), reformatted by you and resold
|> in another form.
|>
Information doesn't automatically "flow" into a formatting tool.
If that were the case, writers wouldn't exist. The act of writing
the story from this "information" is more than a mechanical
collecting/formatting process. It's the creation of intellectual
property, and it is protected under copyright law. Under the current
law, you can't "reformat" the information and sell it without
permission of the author.
-Vivek
ROBERT BOOT, HERSTON MEDICAL LIBRARY
> h...@soda.berkeley.edu (Eric Hollander) writes:
>
> Yes, it is possible to make unlimited copies of information already
> produced, but where do you think that information comes from originally?
> Human labor, just like laser printers and other physical goods. You can
> programmer, no programs get written. News articles are exactly the same.
> article is distributed without any payment to the author, then there is no
> motivation to write. We'd be left with magizines like TIME producing drivel
> on par with broadcast television, if they even survived.
A curious discussion. Most members of the net either pay for publication or
give away copyright to rapacious international publishing houses. The evidence
that lack of copyright inhibits publishing is scant or non-existent. The net is
ample evidence, if it were needed, that ego is sufficient incentive to publish.
The notion that if we circumvent copyright, creative writing will dry up is
nonsense. Existing copyright law prevents desemination of information; it does
not encourage it. If TIME went broke, I think few would be the poorer.
The net provides an unequalled opportunity for academics to reclaim their
intellectual property: I cannot understand why this is not being seized.
Academics no not need financial rewards for publishing & these are largely
unavailable anyway.
A personal note: have a look at the economics of journal purchases by
libraries. Try to figure out who benefits.
___________________________________________________________________________
ROBERT BOOT R.B...@cc.uq.edu.au
HERSTON MEDICAL LIBRARY
The University of Queensland Telephone +61 7 365 5354
Brisbane Qld 4072 AUSTRALIA Facsimile +61 7 365 5243
ROBERT BOOT, HERSTON MEDICAL LIBRARY
_____________________________________________________________________
> Economics/market pressure helps to introduce accountability. Ever see the
> common disclaimer in public domain software:
>
> THE INFORMATION AND CODE PROVIDED IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY
> OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
> THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
> PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR INSTITUTION BE LIABLE FOR
> ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER INCLUDIND DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCINENTAL,
> CONSEQUENTIAL, LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS OR SPECIAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF
> THE AUTHOR OR INSTITUTION HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
> DAMAGES.
>
>
> --
> Jay D. Anderson jay.an...@hx.deere.com
> John Deere Harvester
> 1100 13th Avenue (309)765-6063
> E. Moline, Illinois 61244 FAX: (309)765-9010
st...@uno.edu
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
>A curious discussion. Most members of the net either pay for publication or
>give away copyright to rapacious international publishing houses. The evidence
>that lack of copyright inhibits publishing is scant or non-existent. The net is
>ample evidence, if it were needed, that ego is sufficient incentive to publish.
>The notion that if we circumvent copyright, creative writing will dry up is
>nonsense. Existing copyright law prevents desemination of information; it does
>not encourage it. If TIME went broke, I think few would be the poorer.
>The net provides an unequalled opportunity for academics to reclaim their
>intellectual property: I cannot understand why this is not being seized.
>Academics no not need financial rewards for publishing & these are largely
>unavailable anyway.
>ROBERT BOOT R.B...@cc.uq.edu.au
>The University of Queensland Telephone +61 7 365 5354
Right, mate. Give me tenure and I might write for free too.
Phil Elmer-DeWitt
TIME
Eric Hollander
ROBERT BOOT, HERSTON MEDICAL LIBRARY <mail...@uqvax.cc.uq.oz.au> wrote:
>A personal note: have a look at the economics of journal purchases by
>libraries. Try to figure out who benefits.
Exactly. Most publishing today is scientific research. The scientists are
not benefitting; I know that our lab has to spend a considerable amount of
money paying journals to publish our stuff (no, not because they wouldn't
accept it otherwise, but because they charge for publication!). So we have
to pay them to publish it, and then we have to buy the journals from them,
and they still don't give us access to the infomration. I would love to be
able to search through the text body of articles to find all references to
various things. Yet this is impossible because the body text is never made
available. Libraries spend huge amounts of money on these journals.
So basically paper is just very expensive and environmentally unsound
copyprotection. There is only one service which the journal editors provide
for scientists: reputation. I know that if it's published in Nature, it is
more likely tto have scientific merrit than if it were published somewhere
else. If researchers just put their articles up for ftp, there would be no
one to stamp it and say, "I've looked at this, and it's worthy of being in
Nature!".
However, this service comes at a huge expense. It's costing science
collectively billions of dollars. And there would be other ways of
providing reputation service, such as having review committees or
something. Scientists could perhaps start such committees on their own, and
so cut publishers out of the loop.
e
Carl Meijer
>Flattered as I am to see my article appear hear, I feel obliged to point
^^^^
>out that TIME is protected by copyright and that this article has been
>reprinted without permission. Using the Internet and anonymous services to
>violate copyright laws is not going to do any of us any good.
>Phil Elmer-DeWitt
>TIME
I find this thread about whether or not it is justifiable to post TIME
articles to newsgroups (IMO it is most definitely NOT acceptable) less
interesting than how the hell a journalist could make the typo above?
Perhaps if more people subscribed, TIME could afford to invest in a spell-
checker.
--Carl
P.S. I know it's an unwritten rule of the net that followups shouldn't pick
on people's spelling but in view of the poster's profession at a respected
magazine I thought it was justified.
Andrew B Stellman
NATION IN C.. by Carl Mei...@elaine.ee.un
> articles to newsgroups (IMO it is most definitely NOT acceptable) less
> interesting than how the hell a journalist could make the typo above?
Oh, yeah. I forgot, journalists aren't human. They don't make mistakes
like the rest of us.
Andy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|
Andrew Stellman | "[CMU] shouldn't dump a lot of resources into |
r...@cmu.edu | maintaining a zombie dinosaur." |
read alt.spleen | -- Jim Zelenka, in the new hit movie |
be kind to frogs| Jurassic Park II: Day of the Living Dead |
________________|__________________________________________________|
Eddy Robinson
>but also we have the entire population subsidizing
>the small fraction that is on the net.
An increasingly large fraction, and one of the highest skilled and most
technically aware groups in the workplace. A group which can offer skills
and ideas to business, interacting in a rapidly developing environment
based around cooperation and sharing of ideas. This is a mjor national asset.
>Consider what TIME would be like under your subsidized "free" information
>scenario: Everyone on a sizable computer network would get TIME for
>virtually nothing.
Not if you prohibited the reproduction of complete works, and most certainly
not for profit. News expires, and retaining control over it just puts a time
limit on its usefulness to the population. When a periodical ends its week
on the shelves, the information can be given away. It's not going to generate
much more revenue under its own steam.
>The consumers of information should have to pay for it, just like the
>consumers of every other commidity under the sun. I see no reason for
>information consumption to be subsidized.
There is no physical limit (in practise) on the amount of information. It's
not like coal or iron, it doesn't run out. You can't copy a lump of iron. If
you could then nobody would pay anything much for it.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "Apathy on the individual level translates to insanity on the mass level" |
| - Douglas R. Hofstadter |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Disclaimer: I don't represent Ashmount UK's opinions, only my own.
Eddy Robinson
>The article said this at some point; but then later it said that
>one possible outcome of the planned exit of the government
>from the net's central management was that somebody would
>gain control and "turn it into a giant compuserve".
Some poeople think it's already happened, pointing at people like MCI. It
hasn't won't, and can't in my view. There are a large number of low-cost
service providers and cheaply available tools, so nobody has an overriding
advantage in the net markets. So they specialise: the market is big enough
to absorb all the competitors for a long time yet.
Eddy Robinson
It would never succed. It would have to receive an identical and unprece-
dented judgement - indeed there are already precedents against it in the US -
in every country in the world. About .05% of the UK population are joining
internet each year, nad the rate is increasing. Approximately 5% of the
working population now uses a networked computer as part of their work, with
39% of the population using computers at work.
Eddy Robinson
>If idiots don't quit abusing this wonderful place called the Internet,
>it's going to get taken over by a bunch of narrow-minded corporate
>censors.
I think this is a bit paranoid, and I also think it is highly improbable for
all sorts of reasons. I think Wolf's point in not wanting to hear about "this
ridiculous law business" is that he wants to discuss this in terms of
principles, which should be the foundation of law.
Eddy Robinson
>
>oh false! that sort of thinking is exactly what starved edgar allan poe to
>death. he was paid $60 for 'the raven' which became one of the most
>successful poems in the world while he was alive, but because of inadequate
>copyright laws he got zilch from it.
That was because other people were making money out of it. I'm sure all this
got discussed when the printing press came out as well - "what will scribes
do?"
Eddy Robinson
>if you thinki ideas are of such great importance, than why
>dont you go out and plop down the 3 dollars and purchase the magazine.
The information will be past its sell-by date before too long. Posting
it on the net is equivalent to recycling it. Everyone benefits, and the
article contributes to new expertise and awareness.
Eddy Robinson
of a tax on hardware. It will be passed directly to the consumer: the
information market is sufficiently cutthroat that the consumer has a good
deal of flexibility in how they spend money. Any tax that raises the cost of
access to information is self-defeating.
Eddy Robinson
>pretend. How much of the $2k you pay for a laser printer goes towards
>the R&D (information) cost, and how much for the hardware? Even
>today, hundreds of products have an inextricable mixture of
>"soft" information elements and "hard" material elements.
You can't just ftp a laser printer from the net though, can you? The hardware
costs are offset by the laws of physics, since they are physical objects.
Software is effectively massless with the size of storage and throughput
today. The costs of producing what goes into a shrinkwrap copy of WordThing
are negligible.
Eddy Robinson
>Communist.
>
>Ahem... sorry. Let me rephrase.
>
>I beg to differ with your opinion.
I would point out that I never claimed this as *my* opinion; I made an
observation on the sort of criticism he could expect, and have been borne
out in that. My own views are more moderate: I don't think that periodical
information needs anything like the copyright protection accorded to books
et al.
Mr. Elmer-DeWitt's article is going to be dead news next month. It'll be in
collections and libraries of course, but it will mostly win up in the trash.
It may be reprinted by Time in a yearly digest, or used as reference for
analysis and future history, but mostly it's going to fade into the back of
people's minds. Ultimately, Mr. Elmer-DeWitt *gains* by having his article
bounced around the nets - copies of his article and discussions like this
bring his name (and Time's) to a far wider audience. This benefit is not
directly measurable, but it enhances Mr. Elmer-DeWitt's professional
reputation.
The short-term cost to Mr. Elmer-DeWitt's finances is probably non-existent.
I see many articles quoted on the nets, but not so many that I have ever
stopped buying magazines or newspapers. It is highly unlikely that Time has
lost a single reader due to this article being posted.
A number of simple rules could sort this situation out easily. First, one
must not copy information for profit, and the anon poster hasn't done so.
This of course means that s/he is not a thief, since there is no dicernable
loss to the author and no gain to the anon poster.
"For profit" should be taken to mean for any commercial gain, eg a TV
station could not show a news photo without permission, texts could not be
reproduced in commercial literature and so on.
Second, nothing should be copied within the lifetime of the article in print
or other media, to avoid damaging sales. Third, the reproduction of complete
bodies of work is prohibited, as a complete work is collectable and can be
re-issued in its own right (rather than in a digest, say).
The first and last points allow us to conclude that technical information
ought to be freely copyable and available. This enhances the usefulness of
the information, the reputation of the publisher, and the quality of life
available to the community at large. Our rules above prevent commercial
exploitation of other people's work, while increasing the general level of
expertise available. This includes software (I support the Free Software
Foundation wholeheartedly), engineering, biochemistry, whatever. The laws
relating to things like "look-and-feel" hit the mark in spirit, if not as
yet in practise. I know good programmers who can't afford to upgrade their
compilers for 2 or 3 years at a time, and have difficulty finding work as
a result.
Technical books should also expire like periodicals after a while, as the
information ceases to be completely current and the value to the buyer drops.
Any major software release could expire books about the previous version, and
I suggest that source code of the old version should also be released into
the public domain, if not straight away. It commercial use of the source
(instead of buying the tool) should be illegal, and of course the individual
user lacks manuals or technical support.
All this allows us to raise the level of information available to people,
has a substantial goodwill benefit for authors and publishers, and is
generally a more cooperative way of working. I don't like zero-sum games,
and this allows everyone to benefit.
Eddy Robinson
>My friend told me that I shouldn't give free concerts,
>because people will get used to not paying musicians for
>their music.
Ridiculous. I don't like closed shops, and this would lead to one if your
friend's idea took off.
Eddy Robinson
>premises are a) the money should come from a hardware tax, so only people
>who own hardware will pay it, and b) this whole thing really only makes
>sense if everyone is on the net.
a) I don't own any guns or anything, but I pay taxes for defense. I've left
school, but I pay tax for education. I'd be happy for some of my taxes to go
towards subsidizing the nets.
As for everyone being on...well nearly everyone has a telephone, and the
technology is getting cheaper and cheaper. I give it 25 years until most
people are on it.
bea...@utkvx.utk.edu
cme...@elaine.ee.und.ac.za (Carl Meijer) writes:
>In article <2do7r6$h...@panix.com> p...@panix.com (Philip Elmer-DeWitt) writes:
>>Flattered as I am to see my article appear hear, I feel obliged to point
> ^^^^
>Perhaps if more people subscribed, TIME could afford to invest in a spell-
>checker.
As I'm sure you don't know, a spell checker would not have caught that error.
"Hear" and "here" are both dictionary words and as such legal. I'd use a spell
checker here, but the number of words it recognizes is too low to be useful.
So, maybe Mr. Elmer-DeWitt just didn't bother to read through every word of his
post three times, set it down for a few hours and come back to read it again. I
sure as hell don't have the time for that when writing USENET posts; never mind
that such review is an amazing act of loop-jumping on some systems.
I'd like to see your posts for a year so I can count your own typos -- assuming
I could spare enough time to care for such trivialities.
Jonathan -- Who's wondering why he's following-up on this.
Steve Withers
Eric Hollander <h...@soda.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> In article <2do7r6$h...@panix.com>, Philip Elmer-DeWitt <p...@panix.com> wrote:
> >Flattered as I am to see my article appear hear, I feel obliged to point
> >reprinted without permission. Using the Internet and anonymous services to
> >violate copyright laws is not going to do any of us any good.
> >Phil Elmer-DeWitt
> >TIME
>
> the world a better place. But in any case, they are no longer enforcable,
> what with the spread of the 'net and cheap, high-acuracy OCR. We need to
> find a better system. There's far too much information out there for paper
> to be an effective storage and retreival system.
Posting copyrighted material without permission is not good. Having said that,
I have done it myself.
Why?
The usual reasons are the same ones that would motivate me to tack an
interesting article up on the notice board at work. The information in the
article was "news" or an "idea" that I found so worthy/compelling that i
wanted to share it with others.
I do have trouble with not being able to pass on information found in "news"
publications.
My usual response is to summarise the main points in my own words, credit the
source, and charge no money.
The people reading the article usually/often live in a part of the owrl in
which the original publication is not sold or available.
I can't buy the NY Times here. I can't buy the Wall Street Journal or the
Washington Post. I am almost always grateful when someone posts an interesting
article on the Net from a publiaction I have often never heard of. In some
cases I have even sought these publications out and in one case - subscribed.
Wholesale posting of other people's work is definitely not on. But surely
reporting "news" - where ever one may find it - is acceptable.
In short: If you post one interesting article from a publication......no
worries. It's news. If you post the entire publication every day.....you're in
trouble.
Steve
--
Steve Withers Wellington New Zealand
ste...@swell.actrix.gen.nz (all night)
swit...@vnet.ibm.com (all day)
OS/2 2.1 user
Steve Withers
Vivek Sadananda Pai <vi...@owlnet.rice.edu> wrote:
>
> As a paying subscriber of Time magazine and a strong
> supporter of intellectual property laws, I think the
> idea of "liberating" information is a bunch of crap.
> It's plain and simple theft, and it inevitably leads
> to the lack of new information - if everyone pirated
> Time, and Time subscriptions fell below the threshold
> needed to keep it going, it would shut down. Then
> where do you propose to get your information?
>
> intellectual property (and I assume you fall into that
> category) should realize that this theft may one day affect
> you personally.
Posting one interesting article from a single issue of a magazine available in
that form (TIME changes from country to country) is not the same as posting
the entire - or major parts thereof - issue illegally every week.
My view is that where an event or report is relevant to the interests or
activities of a group (like the followers of this newsgroup), it is acceptable
to "post" it for the general good. This is directly analogous to tacking up
the article on the notice board in your staff lunch room. It is one article.
It is intersting. You don't do it every day. It is also analogous to being in
a public library. The library buys one copy - but dozens or hundreds may read
it.
It is definitely not done to copy the work of another and to profit by it. But
it is an acceptable use of the material to share it with other interested
people - just as in the examples above.
David Sternlight
Steve Withers <ste...@swell.actrix.gen.nz> wrote:
>In article <CHJAr...@rice.edu>,
>Vivek Sadananda Pai <vi...@owlnet.rice.edu> wrote:
>>
>> As a paying subscriber of Time magazine and a strong
>> supporter of intellectual property laws, I think the
>> idea of "liberating" information is a bunch of crap.
>> It's plain and simple theft, and it inevitably leads
>> to the lack of new information - if everyone pirated
>> Time, and Time subscriptions fell below the threshold
>> needed to keep it going, it would shut down. Then
>> where do you propose to get your information?
>>
>> People who will be making their lives from manufacturing
>> intellectual property (and I assume you fall into that
>> category) should realize that this theft may one day affect
>> you personally.
>
>Posting one interesting article from a single issue of a magazine available in
>that form (TIME changes from country to country) is not the same as posting
>the entire - or major parts thereof - issue illegally every week.
You may not be aware of it, but Time "publishes" each issue, on the date of
release, on America Online, and individual articles are retrievable. They
get paid for this, through connect time of readers. AOL gets the connect
time charges, and one assumes they share those fees with Time in some way.
Thus posting even a single article is not only a copyright violation, but
also can be argued to cause TIME and AOL monetary damages.
David
--
David Sternlight When the mouse laughs at the cat,
there is a hole nearby.--Nigerian Proverb
Christopher Harris
Usenet boards for? This is already used for announcing software releases
and would be a good place for other more conventional advertising as well.
Chris Harris (cha...@cs.ucl.ac.uk)
David DeLaney
It's frowned on in the net *at large*; it's perfectly fine in groups that are
designed for/allow it. You have stated the exact purpose of the *.announce
boards; they're not for "This week only, a steal at 999.95" stuff, but for
announcing that new products (or improvements on old ones) are now available,
and the like. There is a whole biz.* hierarchy on which advertising is
encouraged; you might go check it out. It's just that people discussing
urban folklore or the writings of Tolkien get understandably miffed when
somebody plops an ad for BetterVision Graphix down in the middle of their
conversation...
Dave, clarifying
--
David DeLaney: dbd@(utkux.utcc | panacea.phys | enigma.phys).utk.edu - collect
them all! Disclaimer: AFAIK, *nobody* speaks for U.T.Knoxville (consistently);
Thinking about this disclaimer (or about high energy theoretical particle __
physics) may cause headaches. .sig virus: Vicki Robinson v2.24; Kibo #: 0 \/
Jim Beers
>Consider what TIME would be like under your subsidized "free" information
>scenario: Everyone on a sizable computer network would get TIME for
>information tax and the publishing costs (probably inflated, to make up for
>TIME's decreased [physical] circulation).
Again, my proposed tax doesn't make any sense unless almost everyone is on
the net.
>Sure it costs very little to sent a magizine article across the internet,
>but the people who write that article are still producing a good/performing
>a serivce, AND the people who _read_ the article are consuming the good/service.
>The consumers of information should have to pay for it, just like the
>consumers of every other commidity under the sun. I see no reason for
>information consumption to be subsidized.
The consumers of information definitely should pay for it. The point I'm
making is that we are all potential consumers of that information, so we
should all pay for it. Maybe I don't actually read TIME (I don't), but I
would still be glad to pay for its production, if I knew that other people
who don't read _Motorcyclist_ (which I do read) are paying for its
production.
So, are you proposing that the government collect taxes and pay anyone who
produces an electronic publication? In that case, I'd start producing
"Jim's Electronic News" and write a page of junk every month and collect the
same pay as a reporter for TIME.
Otherwise you propose that the government decides what should be published
and manages the whole operation based on what it thinks is appropriate?
I prefer to vote with my dollars and leave the extra level of management out
of it, and pay the reporter directly, it is much cheaper and more productive
that way.
There is a reason Communism failed in the Soviet Union, please don't suggest
we start it here on the net.
Jim of "Jim's Electronic News"
Jim Beers
>h...@soda.berkeley.edu (Eric Hollander) writes:
>>In article <1993Dec6.0...@news.media.mit.edu>,
>>Brent C.J. Britton <br...@media.mit.edu> wrote:
>>>Communist.
>>>
>>>Ahem... sorry. Let me rephrase.
>make unlimited copies of a computer program, but if no one pays the
>programmer, no programs get written. News articles are exactly the same.
HACKERS: heroes of the computer revolution - Levy, Steven ISBN 0-440-13405-6.
People who LIVE to write will keep on writing, people who LIVE to program
will keep on programming. I think that introducing economics to it really
just produces commercial drivel. Most of the stuff that's worth reading
lately is on the 'net, and very few us are being paid.
I've not read the book, but what about those of us that LIVE to goof off, but
program to pay the bills? Personally, I think we should bet payed to goof off
and the tax payers should pay for it.
Jim
Tom Miller
> I also think that the use of copyright has serious disadvantages.
> In particular, ideas are too important to do anything which
> limits their circulation. Somehow, it seems desirable to find
> a way to reward writers without limiting information flow.
I thought a copyright was over a paticular expression of an idea, rather
than the idea itself... Two composers might write music about a paticular
event. They are BOTH expressing something about the same idea. But it is
"the work" that is copyrighted, rather than the idea....
Tom
--
uucp: uunet!m2xenix!puddle!299!102!Tom.Miller
Internet: Tom.M...@f102.n299.z1.fidonet.org
POLK S.
POLK S.
Eddy Robinson
>Right, mate. Give me tenure and I might write for free too.
>
>Phil Elmer-DeWitt
>TIME
I don't have anything like atenure, but that doesn't stop me writing for
free. Not everything I write is for free, nor is writing all I do for a
living, but some stuff gets written for its own sake.
Some people I write for can't afford to pay me, so I lose nothing except my
time - and I consider the publicity worth the effort. Equally, someone has
read and digested your article on the network, but might never have glanced
at the issue of Time in which it was published - in fact I don't look at Time
very often so you are *only* known to me through the net.