Procedure for rec.humor.funny debate
Brad Templeton
is evil" on the net. Is it just a loud few, or is it a real, amost
unanimous sentiment?
To find out, if the tone of this discussion doesn't change in a week or
so, then we will hold a vote. Clearly the vote should not be conducted
by myself or my attackers.
I suggest that one impartial person on a major site hold the vote. Two
statements will be prepared, independently. (Neither will get to see
the other before posting.) The statements, and a description of the vote
will be posted to rec.humor.funny. The readers will register their
opinion.
We will then know what the netters think, and can then work from facts
rather than speculation and flamage.
Those of you who wish to argue against the concept of compilation copyright
and the implications I have outlined should get together and form your
document.
While right now it may seem like an argument over one newsgroup, it actually
is an argument of what political philosophy reigns on the network. As the
net is actually a private federation without a governing body, it is,
in fact a libertarian or "minarchist" system. It has almost no rules, but
does exist and is governed by the laws of the nations in which net sites
reside. These provide rules like copyright, electronic communications
privacy, private control of individual sites, obscenity laws, freedom
from (or being subject to) government censorship, and of course a court
system that sits behind it all.
That's the reality, but other internal structures are possible. Some
desire a "communist" system, where nothing can be owned, and everything
is free -- where everything comes from each participant according to his/her
abilities and to each participant according to his/her needs. Some opt
for pure communism (a subset of anarchy) where no rules enforce that, and
some, like the Free Software Foundation, opt for a communism where this
is enforced by the rules of the outside world.
Some would like anarchy, but the net will have trouble staying truly anarchist,
as some, Jonothan Richmond being a prime example, will always go outside
the system if they feel it necessary. This was his right, you know, although
I wish he had had a greater understanding of what he was doing when he did
it.
Some would prefer a more strucutred system. There are vestiges of democracy,
such as the newsgroup voting process and the vote I have described above.
There are also feudal lords who reign over large sites. There are even
"benevolent dictators," if you will, such as moderators and people who
maintain things like the checkgroups messages. There was once even an
oligarchy, known as the backbone cabal.
At times, some have suggested a real structure, with membership agreements
and the works. This have never progressed very far.
It is my feeling that it is best to stick with the real, minarchist structure
that underlies the net. But others disagree. The communist ideal of
complete and free flow of information has appeal, but it is my belief
that private ownership actually encourages the development and flow of
resources/information in both the real world and the information world.
-------
To close off, let me warn those of you in the USA that I don't use the
word communist in the perjoritave sense that most Americans do. I use
it in its true sense -- as descriptive of a philosophy that is primarily
associated with the concept of the absence of private property. Nothing
to do with the soviets at all.
--
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
Patrick A. Townson
>I am distressed by this recent tone of "ownership of intellectual work
>is evil" on the net. Is it just a loud few, or is it a real, amost
>unanimous sentiment?
I don't see any "ownership of intellectual work is evil" thinking here.
I don't see anyone saying you should not own intellectual work. But you
yourself have said that your work has been that of compiler; not author.
There is no intellectual process involved in editing messages and having
the right to post edited text on the network.
If you want to create something of your own, claim ownership and profit
from it, please do. No problem with that; the newspapers buy my stuff
occassionally also.
The sentiment is that people are posting things on Usenet, via your
group, which they posted in good faith as PUBLIC DOMAIN material. The
sentiment is that many, many people participate in the daily production
we call Usenet. Public, non-profit networks of this sort are unique,
in that they rely on the goodwill of all to make them succeed.
What if someone, like a backbone administrator for example, were to cull
through the messages on the entire net over a two year period -- including
messages in r.h.f., and then publish something called "The Best of
Usenet Messages" -- and claim compilation copyright based on the several
hours he had to labor each week getting his machine to work properly in
handling news? Would you like that?
>Those of you who wish to argue against the concept of compilation copyright
>and the implications I have outlined should get together and form your
>document.
There is no argument with compilation copyright where many publications are
concerned....just that it does not belong on Usenet. It would work fine,
and in fact be quite appropriate on Compuserve, or Dow Jones, or Source.
But not here.
>That's the reality, but other internal structures are possible. Some
>desire a "communist" system, where nothing can be owned, and everything
>is free -- where everything comes from each participant according to his/her
>abilities and to each participant according to his/her needs. Some opt
>for pure communism (a subset of anarchy) where no rules enforce that, and
>some, like the Free Software Foundation, opt for a communism where this
>is enforced by the rules of the outside world.
But communism is not what we have here. Usenet is a mutual network of
participating system administrators and others who have agreed to pass
news groups back and forth, in echange for the benefits that each recieves
from their ease in reading what others have posted. No more, no less. It
has nothing to do with communism, democracy or any other political theory.
>At times, some have suggested a real structure, with membership agreements
>and the works. This have never progressed very far.
>
>It is my feeling that it is best to stick with the real, minarchist structure
>that underlies the net. But others disagree. The communist ideal of
>complete and free flow of information has appeal, but it is my belief
>that private ownership actually encourages the development and flow of
>resources/information in both the real world and the information world.
I think its going to have to become a 'real structure' one of these days, or
the net will collapse under its own weight. The people who really have
concern for the welfare of the net and its future should begin thinking
about the day that things have to be spelled out more closely. In my time
here, I have already seen incidents which have stunk everything up, and
been appalled at some of the things people have done.
So you believe that 'private ownership actually encourages the development
and flow of resources.....' Indeed, it does. Trouble is, you don't own
anything, at least in this context. What is here is owned by everyone
here, at least where the information is concerned.
--
Patrick Townson
pat...@chinet.chi.il.us / US Mail: 60690-1570 (personal zip code)
FIDO: 115/743 / AT&T Mail: 529-6378 (!ptownson) / MCI Mail: 222-4956
Patrick A. Townson
I don't think anyone involved with Usenet; either as moderator, sysadmin
of some site, backbone site, etc would set out to deliberatly steal or
mis-use the stuff posted here.
*But I wouldn't trust a couple of the commercial networks at all*
And networks like Compuserve, Western Union's FYI, Source, and others
which get their $5-7 per hour from users reading data bases -- have for
some time been hostile toward Fidonet and Usenet for 'stealing' users
from them; people who have wised up to the fact that you don't have to
spend $6 an hour to have a good time with your terminal and modem.
If they came after [Telecom Digest] -- and I've been told Compuserve
would like to have it -- I know it would get me almighty P.O.'ed to do the
work every night and have them charge their bozos $6 per hour to read it.
Perhaps Brad's fears could be allayed by the establishment of a not-for-
profit corporation called the Usenet Cooperative Trust, Inc. or some
similar name. Have someone like Gene Spafford and one or two other
people as officers of the corporation and trustees.
*Let the corporation and/or the trustees of the Trust hold a compilation
copyright on the entire output each day.* Modify the news software so
that each time a user goes 'rn', as part of the message identifying which
groups have unread messages, a message would play out saying that the
entire contents were compile-copyrighted by the Usenet Cooperative Trust;
that the data herein is for use by persons participating in Usenet and
may not be exported without the consent of the trustees of the Trust.
People would continue doing pretty much as they do now, but at least such
a copyright would prevent the worst of the abuses that Brad fears. It
would prevent wholesale lifting of material by the commercial services;
and it would recognize the work people like Templeton, Spafford and others
do to keep things running smoothly. If some commercial organization or
commercial site re-selling Usenet wanted to participate, then they could
apply to the Trustees, and the matter be brought to everyone here for a
discussion and vote. Everyone would know when something like this
occurred, and be permitted to decide yea or nay.
J Greely
(Patrick A. Townson) writes:
>I don't see any "ownership of intellectual work is evil" thinking here.
>I don't see anyone saying you should not own intellectual work. But you
>yourself have said that your work has been that of compiler; not author.
>There is no intellectual process involved in editing messages and having
>the right to post edited text on the network.
"There is no intellectual process involved in editing messages?"
Just what do *you* mean by editing? Spell-checking? Maybe a quick
pass through emacs? Funny, but I thought the whole point of
rec.humor.funny was that it be restricted to jokes that at least
one person thought held "sufficient" humor. If the process of
intelligent selection does not involve intelligence, let's replace
Brad with a shell script and cron (or would the shell script be too
bright?).
Brad has several times mentioned the basic process he goes through
in creating rec.humor.funny, involving (for a start) reading all of
the submitted jokes, verifying either originality or proper
crediting, and making sure that they haven't been done before in
the group. In addition, he evaluates the potential "offensiveness"
of each joke, choosing to rot13 those he feels require it. *Then*
it goes to a shell script and cron. I'm sure if he posted
statistics on how many jokes pass through his mailbox vs. the
number that get posted, most would be forced to agree that the task
is not a mindless rubber-stamp. We won't even mention the service
he performs by wading through rec.humor looking for gems, except to
mention it.
>The sentiment is that people are posting things on Usenet, via your
>group, which they posted in good faith as PUBLIC DOMAIN material.
Bluntly, so what? Usenet is already carried by commercial services,
who make their money by essentially reselling the material provided
to them for free. While they tend to be controversial, they *never*
get the kind of hassle Brad is getting. Maybe he's a little more
visible than the silent mass of bboard-boys culling a profit from
the sweat of the net?
> The
>sentiment is that many, many people participate in the daily production
>we call Usenet. Public, non-profit networks of this sort are unique,
>in that they rely on the goodwill of all to make them succeed.
... and when that goodwill breaks down, someone gets nailed. Last
time, they aimed at Brad. Maybe his initial position was too far
from the accepted party stance here, but it is about as justifiable
as a mugging victim screaming for tougher enforcement. He was
publicly slammed for his efforts, and was threatened with lawsuits
left and right. Maybe he went overboard. I wouldn't blame him if
he had.
But I don't think he did. The presence of a monthly introduction
shows good legal advice, and allows him to point at something
everyone has to *see* to read the group. Maybe they skipped it on
the basis of the subject line, but they had to make a decision.
The proper legal term for this is "covering your ass". If the
current problem is not entirely ended, or if some disgruntled
freshman without a sense of humor jumps on the bandwagon, Brad has
his first line of defense.
>What if someone, like a backbone administrator for example, were to cull
>through the messages on the entire net over a two year period -- including
>messages in r.h.f., and then publish something called "The Best of
>Usenet Messages" -- and claim compilation copyright based on the several
>hours he had to labor each week getting his machine to work properly in
>handling news? Would you like that?
(actually, I would. sort of a rec.goodstuff in digest form)
You're playing with words here. First you postulate someone
culling through posted articles, and then ask if he can claim a
compilation copyright based on the labor of keeping the news
transport mechanism running. What about the time spent performing
the culling? Meaningless?
There are over 67,000 articles in our history file, comprising
about 6 weeks of news. Let's say our hypothetical collector reads
10% of those, spending an average of 10 seconds on each. In those
six weeks, he has spent 18 hours just *reading* them. Adding a
reasonable process of selection, to lower the total to a printable
form (say, 200 articles), we'll let him choose 10% of the articles
read to go over again, this time spending 30 seconds on each
(another 5.5 hours). Now he's narrowed the field to 200 articles,
each of which requires spell-checking and possible reformatting.
We'll be kind, and say this takes only an additional two hours.
Since the specification was for an *administrator* (or, in your
view, an adminisTRAITOR), we'll add in the five hours a week
keeping news running for those six weeks.
Over 55 hours spent on 6 weeks of news, and he hasn't even gotten
started with whatever typesetting and printing arrangements he's
chosen. Not to mention that I've made him a speed reader and expert
proofreader, with lots of dedicated disk space and cpu time, and a
prophetic knowledge of where the best articles will appear. Maybe
I should add in pop-and-twinkies charges, while I'm at it? Never
mind that this doesn't begin to approach the effort of producing a
real "Best of Usenet", which would be several orders of magnitude
greater.
Don't belittle the effort required of a competent editor. You
may wake up some morning to find that your entire life has been
red-penciled.
-=-
J Greely (jgr...@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)
The Ohio State University, Department of
Computer and Information Sciences
Dennis L. Mumaugh
>through the messages on the entire net over a two year period -- including
>messages in r.h.f., and then publish something called "The Best of
>Usenet Messages" -- and claim compilation copyright based on the several
>hours he had to labor each week getting his machine to work properly in
>handling news? Would you like that?
>
>concerned....just that it does not belong on Usenet. It would work fine,
>and in fact be quite appropriate on Compuserve, or Dow Jones, or Source.
>But not here.
>
people have an unlimited right to collect material from USENET
such as jokes from rec.humor, organize them and the sell the
result for profit, I propse the following:
I'll take my archives of comp.unix.wizards and comp.unix.questions
and news.announce.newusers and .... And I'll publish a book on
Everything You Wanted to Know About UNIX and Were Afraid to Ask.
I'll include Doug Gwyn's articles about UNIX and System V, and
Guy Harris' on how things work, and of course John Mashey and
dmr@alice on how things were in the old days, and the concensus
on what good coding standards, etc. Publish the 100 most asked
UNIX questions. Hints and kinks for new users. And not one original
line of text. Hmmmm, I wonder if markov3 or mvs@alice is available
to help?
Someone else can tackle comp.arch and publish a book on computer
organization. Someone else could take rec.arts.movie.reviews and
publish them as a book. We could collect sci.med.aids and sell
it to people as a subscription service. Alt.sex could be sent to
Hustler and Penthouse.
To quote an Oscar Brand song "my god how the money rolls in".
In the above modest proposal in the sense of Jonathan Swift I
mention some moderated groups and some un moderated groups.
Either Brad is right and ANYONE can take material off of USENET,
compile it and publish, or no one can. If Brad is right, the
only question is are your companies willing to carry the feed for
copyrighted material that they will be held liable for
controlling distribution and use? Ask your lawyers. The current
situation is getting to the point where any system administrator
is subject to legal problems if the so-called owner of
rec.humor.funny wants to object.
--
=Dennis L. Mumaugh
Lisle, IL ...!{att,lll-crg}!cuuxb!dlm OR cuuxb!d...@arpa.att.com
R. W. F. Clark
>
>What if someone, like a backbone administrator for example, were to cull
>through the messages on the entire net over a two year period -- including
>messages in r.h.f., and then publish something called "The Best of
>Usenet Messages" -- and claim compilation copyright based on the several
>hours he had to labor each week getting his machine to work properly in
>handling news? Would you like that?
>
Well, under recent copyright laws, it would seem that USEnet articles
are distributed with an implied copyright which would disallow redistribution
for profit.
Further take into account the many posters who place copyright notices
at the ends of their postings.
Such a person would presumably be required to get the permission of
every person whose postings he culled, or risk the first class-action
lawsuit filed by a large group of USEnet posters.
However, the act of sending a joke to rec.humor.funny implies that
the sender has no objection to the distribution of the joke.
This analogy rates a good five milligillies.
fc allegra!psuvax1!psuvm.BITNET!rwc102
pri=-10 Stuart Lynne
>>I am distressed by this recent tone of "ownership of intellectual work
>>is evil" on the net. Is it just a loud few, or is it a real, amost
>>unanimous sentiment?
>
>I don't see any "ownership of intellectual work is evil" thinking here.
>I don't see anyone saying you should not own intellectual work. But you
>yourself have said that your work has been that of compiler; not author.
>There is no intellectual process involved in editing messages and having
>the right to post edited text on the network.
I don't care what anyone says. Weeding through 10,000 jokes to cull out 500,
correcting spelling mistakes, corresponding with authors, taking flak,
drafting ground rules, setting up automated posting software ...... sounds
like a fair bit of work.
And *that* is why you have the concept of compilation copyright. To prevent
someone from taking advantage of that work without permission. Just as the
original author of each article has rights, so does the person who assembles
them. Please note that these are separate and distinct. Just because they
both have the same word "copyright" in them, doesn't make them the same.
The owner of the compilation copyright has no rights with respect to
individual parts, the original author does. The owner of the compilation
copyright has the right to restrict the use of what he has produced while it
is in substantially the form that he produced. I've no idea what percentage
change you would have to make before you could claim that he has no rights.
I suspect it would relate to how much additional information you add.
--
Stuart...@wimsey.bc.ca {ubc-cs,uunet}!van-bc!sl Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532
pri=-10 Stuart Lynne
>If they came after [Telecom Digest] -- and I've been told Compuserve
>would like to have it -- I know it would get me almighty P.O.'ed to do the
>work every night and have them charge their bozos $6 per hour to read it.
And what Brad is doing right now will help to prevent that. Remember he is
setting a precedent which will help to protect Telecom Digest until such
time as you actively renounce the compilation copyright.
Your idea for a Usenet wide community trust is an interesting one, but is it
really needed. What is wrong with the moderators protecting their own turf
so to speak simply by holding the compilation copyright. Compuserve for one
is quite unlikely to do anything as long as you mention those words. They
would be afraid to jeopradize their own rights.
This also holds for the recent comp.mail.maps problem (someone selling the
maps). The moderator just has to add a small header asserting a compilation
copyright. Then go after anyone abusing the information in the manner
alleged in some recent postings (if he is so inclined).
Ramsey W. Haddad
>
>I'll take my archives of comp.unix.wizards and comp.unix.questions
>and news.announce.newusers and .... And I'll publish a book on
>Everything You Wanted to Know About UNIX and Were Afraid to Ask.
I'd love to be able to buy a copy. Seriously.
It would be great if we could figure out a fair system where something
like this is possible.
--
Ramsey W Haddad
Patrick A. Townson
>Your idea for a Usenet wide community trust is an interesting one, but is it
>really needed. What is wrong with the moderators protecting their own turf
>so to speak simply by holding the compilation copyright. Compuserve for one
>is quite unlikely to do anything as long as you mention those words. They
>would be afraid to jeopradize their own rights.
Where the problem would come up is with things like unmoderated groups and
messages of any kind where backbones or sysadmins (involved with news at
their site) are concerned.
Every moderator doing his/her own thing would lead to confusion. And who
would protect the unmoderated groups? No, we are all in this together and
I think if there is to be some formal protection for the community then
it should be net/system-wide.
What happens with messages cross posted to moderated and unmoderated groups?
Who controls it then?
I still suggest that if this is the way to go, then there should be one or
two, perhaps three or four persons widely respected by everyone who function
as the nominal copyright holders for the entire output. I would sheild
them from personal attacks with corporate status, assuming they themselves
did not act wilfully against the net.
I would compile-copyright the whole thing as of 12:01 AM each day and place
the copyright in the hands of the trustees of the Trust. I would modify
the software to plainly state that everything herein is compile-copyrighted,
and may be used freely, with no further permission required by members of
Usenet for their own purposes, etc.
pri=-10 Stuart Lynne
>Where the problem would come up is with things like unmoderated groups and
>messages of any kind where backbones or sysadmins (involved with news at
>their site) are concerned.
Of course this also leads to another question - would it be such a bad thing
if (for example) Compuserve gatewayed comp.all into a new sig? (I'll
volunteer to be the sig moderator :-)
I seem to remember the last time I was reading mac related stuff that
someone was gatewaying stuff into and out of either Delphi or Genie.
If it is a bad thing, why? Other than perhaps increasing the volume (oh my
god the end of the net is near), why is the fact that they charge for access
make a large difference. Portal charges, many small sites charge something
to help pay phone bills etc. Of course Compuserve does make a profit, but
does that really mean that their customers shouldn't have access to UseNet
materials?
It might be interesting to follow up on patrick's suggestion. Have it done
via Usenix or UUNET. They could then act as the organizer for the UseNet sig
on Compuservce. Remember that the Compuserve actually pays a percentage to
the organizer of the group. This could be used to subsidize UUNET's
operations and lower the access costs for people on this side.
Along the same lines, I've thought for a while it would be interesting to
publish a monthly (bi-weekly?) newspaper containing the "Best of UseNet!".
Cull the flames etc out, print related articles together, sell some
advertising and propagate by paid subscriptions.
Mark Brader
> And networks like Compuserve, Western Union's FYI, Source, and others
> which get their $5-7 per hour from users reading data bases -- have for
> some time been hostile toward Fidonet and Usenet for 'stealing' users
> from them; people who have wised up to the fact that you don't have to
> spend $6 an hour to have a good time with your terminal and modem.
I don't really understand why Usenet people would object to something
being carried on, say, Compuserve, just because someone other than makes
money from it. The point of posting something to the net is to achieve
wide distribution for it. I say, the more distribution the better,
provided of course that that distribution is an appropriate one for
the individual message.
If Compuserve can make money by selling something which is available for
free elsewhere -- well, so ? Perhaps what they're really selling is
something else -- a *convenient form of access* to the material. Is there
some objection to that?
You can say right in your article, as I'm doing here, that if the reader
doesn't like paying Compuserve fees to read it, there are other places
where it's available. The informed reader may choose to seek out other
places. If they don't, then Compuserve must be adding value to it in
some way, and therefore earning their profit *from that*.
If you're now saying "but what about intellectual property" -- I'm not
opposed to control of one's intellectual property, nor am I saying that
net postings or compilations are not intellectual property. Contrariwise.
But I am saying that posting something *to Usenet* carries certain
implications. As it says the new users' postings, "Think about where
your article is going." If you post it, you asked for distribution.
Mark Brader, Toronto "Those who mourn for 'USENET like it was' should
utzoo!sq!msb remember the original design estimates of maximum
m...@sq.com traffic volume: 2 articles/day" -- Steven Bellovin
Patrick A. Townson
>
>> And networks like Compuserve, Western Union's FYI, Source, and others
>> which get their $5-7 per hour from users reading data bases -- have for
>> some time been hostile toward Fidonet and Usenet for 'stealing' users
>> from them; people who have wised up to the fact that you don't have to
>> spend $6 an hour to have a good time with your terminal and modem.
>
>I don't really understand why Usenet people would object to something
>being carried on, say, Compuserve, just because someone other than makes
>money from it. The point of posting something to the net is to achieve
>wide distribution for it. I say, the more distribution the better,
>provided of course that that distribution is an appropriate one for
>the individual message.
If we all made money from it, fine. If some of us made money because of
good business judgment in the matter, while others of us lost money because
of poor business judgment, then fine also. If we intended to make money from
Usenet and we all lost money because of our business decisions, then again,
that's fine with me.
But the point is, Usenet participants, ranging from moderators of groups
to system administrators to Universities which supply phone lines and
computers HAD NO INTENTION OF MAKING MONEY (or losing it, for that matter).
The idea was that Usenet was to be a cooperative exchange of messages in
a spirit of goodwill between various computer sites. I give my time to
moderate a group with the understanding that Boston University will give
the resources I need to compile/originate it each day. We both give these
things with the understanding that people at Harvard, Purdue, Company X,
and Site Z will not only make it available at no cost to their users but
will in many instances pass it along to other sites without sending me a
phone bill with a demand for payment in the process.
I don't get paid for moderating; Boston U does not get compensated for the
computer resources, and Randy Suess at Chinet does not get paid for the
dozen phone lines he has installed at his site.
Now in the example cited, here comes Compuserve; willing to take all it
can get for free and re-sell the cooperative efforts of others for $6 per
hour. There is something to be said about the importance of distributing
information; yes, we do want our messages to be widely disseminated, and
our information FREELY available to others.
We overlook/ignore modest user fees of the $10 per month Portal type or
the $50 per year (frequently written off) Chinet type. In the case of
Chinet, the $50 covers Randy's own out-of-pocket expenses on phone lines,
etc, and not much more. But I do not think we can afford to overlook the
commercial resale of our cooperative, goodwill efforts on Usenet. I do
not think we can overlook the fact that Compuserve also compile-copyrights
the entire load every day. Just try downloading huge amounts of data from
Compuserve and displaying it elsewhere!
Ask them sometime: would CIS make an exception for Usenet, if they took it
for themselves? Would they exclude it from their copyright claims and permit
it to be re-displayed elsewhere? I doubt it. If anything, I fully suspect
that if CIS did start taking Usenet stuff, it would only be a matter of
time until *their attornies* started making threatening noises at us, and
making all sorts of condescending remarks.
I'd have to say stay clear of feeding commercial networks unless and until
we, meaning the Usenet community, have full control of the output, and the
terms are to our liking. *Their* reward is in the money they hustle from
their bozo users. *Our* reward is in seeing the results of our collective
efforts each day. Unless we write the terms, then there should be no terms.
Mark Gresham
>correcting spelling mistakes, corresponding with authors, taking flak,
>drafting ground rules, setting up automated posting software ...... sounds
>like a fair bit of work.
>
for typing, typesetting, printing, and binding -- all a
fair amount of work; none are grounds for copyright claims.
Now, concerning what has been called in the past "common law
copyright" (since Brad brought that up recently, though not in
those words):
The notion of "common law copyright" is that the creator of a
work is assumed to be the owner of all copyrights even without
public declaration of them. What Brad left out of this is that
once the work circulates beyond the immediate control of the
creator, things become quite a bit more complicated, and the
burden is, again, on that person to substantiate any claims to such.
For example, lets call the creator of a work Person A. Now if
Person B registers claim to copyright with appropriate
institution, then unless Person A has extremely substantial
evidence to the contrary that he/she is the actual creator of a
work, the copyright will be granted to Person B.
Another example: If Person A does not declare or register claim
to copyright and there is sufficient public distribution of the
work, generally all claim to copyright is lost and the work is
declared by the court to be in the "public domain".
On the issue of "implicit" understandings, if an author has given
implicit consent to allow a work to be freely distributed by
submitting it to a moderated group such as rec.humnor.funny, then
isn't it also reasonable that a moderator has given implicit
consent that the compilation may be freely distributed by agreeing
to volunteer as a moderator, whether or not he changes his mind in
the course of the activity. If such an implicit agrement is
violated, it seems reasonable that those who agreed to allowed him to
volunteer can likewise replace him.
I also wonder how such volunteer work relates to the issue of
"work for hire", even though no money has exchanged hands.
In the "work for hire" situation, the creator has given up claim
to copyright to the hiring party or company in exchange for a fee
(reasonable or not :-)).
BTW, I'd like to agree with some statements to the effect that in
no way can any claims to copyright protect anyone from legal
action, civil or criminal, in the areas of libel, slander, or
civel rights violations; it would, instead simply strengthen the
plaintiff's charge of responsibility on the part of the copyright
claimant. Because of that, I'd rather not see a "Usenet
Collective Trust" or such claiming compilation copyrights (valid
or not) -- as that may make us all subject to liability whether or
not we have *anything* to do with such groups as rec.humor.funny,
which I don't. I would hate to see the U.S. courts, for example,
subject the entire computer networking community to shelling out
money annually as the result of somje class-action suit. Don't
think it can be done? Look at the music record industry. They
must pay a certain percentage of their receipts to the "Music
Performance Trust Fund" as the result of such a suit. (I happen
to be in favor of that one, though.)
Lets leave the copyrights in the hands of the the creators of
individual works and keep as much as is practical in public
domain. And if someone doesn't want the the results of their
moderating work to be public domain, they need not volunteer.
Incidentally, regarding services like CompuServe (tm), I don't
think they're going to continue to pose all that much of a threat.
I enrolled for the free examination period, and sent their
processor into an endlessly repeating "stack overflow error" just
by requesting a particular news -- I guess they've just gotten too
big for their BBS :-). Also their "pay by credit-card or
automatic-bank-withdrawl only" policy is unappetizing to say the
least. As more people discover and/or create alternatives (many
of their "information services" could be provided by the cable TV
companies as well, if not better) I suspect that they will not have
such an easy time; this is recently evidenced by a big marketing
push on their part (in my estimation, the advertising is greater
than the sum of their services).
Needless to say, I un-enrolled soon after that before any charges
accrued.
--Mark Gresham
...gatech!{dscatl!}artsnet!mgresham
ARTSNET
Marco S. Hyman
Others have also thought it would be interesting.
In the new ``C++ report'' (I think that's the name, the first issues was
distributed with the current issue of the Journal of Object Oriented
Programming) there will be a column based upon the best of comp.lang.C++.
This is from memory -- the report is at home.
--marc
--
------
Marco S. Hyman
UUCP: ...!sun!{sfsun,hoptoad}!hsfmsh!mhyman
Domain: {sfsun,hoptoad}!hsfmsh!mhy...@sun.com
Brad Templeton
services like CompuServe, so long as the usenet posters wish it.
Asserting our rights, including moderator's compilation copyrights, assures
that if it is done, it will be done with the cooperation of the usenet
people involved.
In particular, without compilation copyrights of moderated groups on usenet,
places like CIS could feed in the moderated groups, throw in their own input
and claim their *own* compilation copyright on the result.
In particular, there would be no control over whether any information ever
flowed back from the gateway. With protection, usenet people can insist
on a two way link if we want, with the good stuff going both ways.
Without it, you can be sure the flow would only be one way.
I have nothing against this large other nets joining up with usenet, and in
fact I think it could be a good thing, I just feel that it should be a
cooperative effort, under netter control as well as theirs.
David Wright
#I'll take my archives of comp.unix.wizards and comp.unix.questions
#and news.announce.newusers and .... And I'll publish a book on
#Everything You Wanted to Know About UNIX and Were Afraid to Ask.
#Someone else can tackle comp.arch and publish a book on computer organization.
What a good idea - why don't you? I might even buy a copy if it's any good.
You'll need to take a few safeguards - if taken from a group YOU
moderate, you should include in the 'administrivia' the fact that
you plan to produce a book which will include articles from the group,
and that submitting an article to you without objection to this possibility
grants permission to publish the article in such a compilation.
If you include articles from other groups, you should of course
contact the original poster first and request their permission.
Brad *does* post such a notice. (Maybe he didn't way back when the group
started, but he does now). I don't see any objection to his forwarding
articles from rec.humor into rec.humor.funny either, though as that group
does not have a statement from its (non-existant) moderator saying
"I may publish your joke in a for-sale book if you don't object", I do
not think Brad should use articles posted to rec.humor in his annual book
without first asking the poster, (hopefully he does, or will in future).
--
Regards,
David Wright STL, London Road, Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, UK
d...@stl.stc.co.uk <or> ...uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!dww <or> PSI%234237100122::DWW
Mark Linimon
> I'd have to say stay clear of feeding commercial networks unless and until
> we, meaning the Usenet community, have full control of the output, and the
> terms are to our liking.
I'd have to say stay clear of feeding commercial networks, PERIOD. I've
already had to fend off inquiries from more than one headhunter who wants to
tie in their own bulletin board networks; people who (believe me) have not the
_least_ interest in the Spirit of Usenet. We already cross
the "commerical" line, I believe, in misc.jobs.offered (headhunters) and
various replies of the form "my firm can do that" all too often. I'd like
to see less of that, not more. With interconnects to commercial networks
I can't see how there could be less of it.
Mark Linimon
killer!nominil!linimon
disclaimer: speaking just for myself (you think I work at this? :-)
Karl Kleinpaste
Now in the example cited, here comes Compuserve; willing to take all it
No, it's not, and you should stop abusing the name of an organization
which has never even appeared here of their own will. They are not an
example of *anything* as regards the Usenet.
can get for free and re-sell the cooperative efforts of others for $6 per
hour.
CompuServe has been misused as an example so many times that it's no
longer funny. They have been abused in absentia without justification
as some sort of evil presence Out There Someplace from which everyone
is desperately trying to hide Our Good Work.
Y'know, if I packaged up a whole mess of this discussion and foisted
it off on a few interesting people I know across town, I imagine that
there's a couple of Usenetters who just might get informative notes
from people whose titles end in "attorney at law," which notes would
make fascinating comments regarding defamation and slander and libel
and whatever other legalese applies to this situation.
But then, I don't know, since I don't/can't know what is going inside
CServe at this moment, and hence it is entirely possible that I'm
being just as abusive by suggesting such a thing.
*That* is my point: You have no idea what goes on inside CompuServe.
None whatever. I have some, having dealt with them fairly extensively
for quite some time, knowing more than a couple of people who work[ed]
inside it, and having had to deal at a non-trivial level with the
political machinery which it embodies, up to and including the level
of people with job titles like Chief Technical Officer.
Be aware that CompuServe barely knows that Usenet exists. When
CServe's UNIX Forum was created, it took not a small amount of
discussion with the Powers That Be there to make them realize that an
entity comprising more than a million people, a couple hundred
thousand active participants, and thousands of computers could exist
without a formalized power structure. They had to be mollified that
there was no way that a "Usenet, Inc" could come after them in any way
for any reason. There are individuals within CServe that know quite a
lot about Usenet, but in my experience they create an almost empty
intersection with the set which controls the sorts of services CServe
provides.
The thought of gatewaying Usenet with CServe "forums" was debated and
thrown out for at least 3 reasons. Legal: CServe does indeed have a
compilation copyright on the entire contents of CompuServe Information
Service (deliberately not equivalent to CompuServe, Inc itself), and
that compilation copyright could not be easily reconciled with the
anarchy of the Usenet. Enter the new wrinkle of there being
compilation copyrights claimed out here, and the matter becomes much
more muddied indeed. Political: The lack of knowledge of Usenet
within CompuServe makes it darn difficult to get the Powers That Be to
deal with this non-entity, especially because it becomes essentially
impossible to negotiate with a non-entity. Social: Like it or not,
CServe forums are not a whole lot like Usenet newsgroups in a social
sense, and gatewaying one into the other would create some AWFUL
repercussions, based on the opinions of at least a dozen people with
whom I talked about it. The similarity ends with a formal definition
such as, "An electronic medium in which people post messages in a
memo-like format." Anything about the respective formats more than
that cannot be compared directly. Don't think that it would be
possible simply to shout CServe users down for improper Usenetiquette
as per Portal with perjoratives like, "...when you figure out REAL
networks...," because CompuServe comprises more subscribers than
Usenet does, and they'd shout back - louder and in greater numbers.
There is something to be said about the importance of distributing
information; yes, we do want our messages to be widely disseminated, and
our information FREELY available to others.
If you were to address a definition of `free' in order to make the
question meaningful, especially as regards availability -vs-
economics, you might be going somewhere. I consider that you have
not. For myself, I post certain things out of a desire to make
information available, without any thought whatever to the improvement
of my economic condition. I do not care that, e.g., Portal's owners
are very probably making a small (or large) fortune off this sort of
thing, and that my contributions are helping in that occurrence.
All this suggests an equally important point regarding your reference
to whether "we...want our messages...disseminated," seeing as how the
possibility of getting an agreement out of <however many Usenet
participants there are> to <do anything at all> is zero - just ponder
the difficulty of getting a decision made about whether a new
newsgroup should be created.
I suggest that large commercial entities such as CompuServe will never
gateway Usenet into their systems, not because they don't wish to have
to ponder the possibility of pursuing legal action against little
semantic nothings like you and me, but rather because they are more
concerned that YOU will abuse THEM - just as you have already. How
would YOU like to enter this environment at this point, if your name
had been subjected to as much abuse as CompuServe's has up to now?
We overlook/ignore modest user fees of the $10 per month Portal type or
the $50 per year (frequently written off) Chinet type.
Why? What is it about $10/month that constitutes a "modest" fee?
What are you arguing, other than an issue of degree?
Is it not possible that, given the set of services which CServe
offers, $6/hr is really quite "modest" as well? If you are not aware
(from other comments, I don't believe that you are - please correct me
if I'm wrong), CServe offers a whole heck of a lot more than
Usenettish newsgroups/forums. Although I personally do not find them
useful, there is a huge variety of other services (stock exchange
access, travel services, VAST software repositories, email with
gateways to certain other systems including MCI, the list goes on - I
am not trying to make a commercial but rather to stress a point) which
CServe offers; these services make it quite a valuable resource to
some 438,000 (last time I asked) subscribers. These people put up
with CServe's charges without nary a sigh because of the value they
perceive they have gained by it. They evidently consider those fees
"modest." Whose version of "modest" is correct here? Yours? Why?
But I do not think we can afford to overlook the
commercial resale of our cooperative, goodwill efforts on Usenet.
You already have. Can you say with any surety that your "cooperative,
goodwill efforts" are not *already* being resold commercially
somewhere? Tell me, Is CompuServe already on the Usenet? How sure
are you of the answer you just gave? There's a 3B2/400 in my basement
that takes a full newsfeed off of osu-cis, and it speaks with
CompuServe for certain purposes every hour on the hour - how do you
know that I am not already feeding CompuServe? (I speak now in an
abstract sense, of course, to drive a point home. No, I do not feed
CompuServe. But maybe someone else does - have you asked
er...@snark.uu.net? And if he doesn't, does someone else besides?)
Just how profitable is Portal? Do you know? I doubt its proprietors
are the least interested in telling you just how profitable they are,
but a couple of months back I saw someone's back-of-the-envelope
calculation which suggested that Portal pulls in a horrendous amount
of money, at least 6 figures, probably 7 and possibly 8. Again, you
are arguing degree where you cannot even be sure of the scales on
which you're standing, and you're ending up with the malignment of an
organization which is entirely *innocent* due to its complete lack of
presence on this network! How dare you?!?
Ask them sometime: would CIS make an exception for Usenet, if they took it
for themselves? Would they exclude it from their copyright claims and permit
it to be re-displayed elsewhere? I doubt it. If anything, I fully suspect
that if CIS did start taking Usenet stuff, it would only be a matter of
time until *their attornies* started making threatening noises at us, and
making all sorts of condescending remarks.
Let's talk abuse of name. Really and truly.
An entity which you cannot prove has any knowledge of anything you do
has just had its name dragged into the mud by you for purported
intention to cause you and others pain and difficulty.
Just WHO is abusing WHOM, huh?
I saw that BIX has a machine on Usenet (bixpb; cf. <20[03456]@bixpb>,
mostly in news.* newsgroups; <200@bixpb> is their news.newsites
announcement of existence), and one of their people said that they are
intending to gateway certain things into BIX. Before you continue
this baseless tirade against an organization which doesn't even know
you exist, why don't you address your complaints in very explicit,
specific form to this other entity which has actually published its
intention to do precisely the things you fear? Look in news.misc,
<205@bixpb>, and address your comments to bixpb!bensmith.
I'd have to say stay clear of feeding commercial networks unless and until
we, meaning the Usenet community, have full control of the output, and the
There are some people who would like to have full control of the
output of your mouth and keyboard. And they'd be more justified in
their attack on you on the basis of what you've said/written than you
are in your attacks on the still-innocent CompuServe.
terms are to our liking. *Their* reward is in the money they hustle from
their bozo users. *Our* reward is in seeing the results of our collective
efforts each day. Unless we write the terms, then there should be no terms.
[a] There's that "we" and "our" nonsense again.
[b] A little *ad hominem* against CServe users never hurt anyone, did it?
[c] A little *ad hominem* about commercial entities "hustling" their
income never hurt, either, huh?
Jeesh!
--Karl
PS- I have absolutely, positively no commercial affiliation with
CompuServe. I was, for most of a year, the original technical sysop
on its UNIX Forum, a forum which I helped create and a position which
I held as a volunteer - not paid. I gave it up when it became obvious
that I could not dedicate the time to serve its users properly. I
also am working to the completion of an Internet-CompuServe mail
gateway, which again is a dollars-free effort on my part. However,
many CompuServe employees are my friends, and whatever the technical
and political foibles be that occur inside CompuServe, they do not
deserve the extensive abuse which has been heaped upon them
gratuitously from the Usenet.
David Tamkin
| Just how profitable is Portal? Do you know? I doubt its proprietors
| are the least interested in telling you just how profitable they are,
| but a couple of months back I saw someone's back-of-the-envelope
| calculation which suggested that Portal pulls in a horrendous amount
| of money, at least 6 figures, probably 7 and possibly 8.
I wonder if the owner of that envelope knows much about Portal firsthand.
All account numbers I have seen on Portal have been of the form
1.1001.####. The owners' accounts are 1.1001.1000 and 1.1001.1001. There
is a direct arithmetic correlation with how long a customer has been on line
there, so I am quite confident in assuming that they are assigned
consecutively.
The newest people I meet there have account numbers in the low
1.1001.7000's. Some accounts belong to Portal Communications for internal
use; some are without monthly charge for use by conference administrators;
many, many have been canceled fairly quickly because Portal is a very
difficult system to get comfortable on if you are a novice telecommunicator
or if you are used to systems with a more mainline command structure and
presentation, such as CompuServe, GEnie, and People/Link.
Additionally, before Portal began to verify sign-ups that had been placed
by modem before issuing accounts, a lot of accounts went out to phony names
or credit cards and were subsequently canceled as soon as charges were
bounced (if not sooner because the user became abusive under the imagined
protection of false account record information).
Now, I truly do not believe that there are any other classes of accounts;
when I signed up by voice call, no one for an instant questioned me about
which division of the system I wanted to subscribe to. If there are other
departments on Portal, sealed off from the Portal System, they appear to
have no access to Usenet, for it is only those of us on cup.portal.com who
have ever posted there from Portal, so perhaps revenue from these
theoretical other classes of accounts is irrelevant to this discussion.
To say that of the six thousand accounts issued five thousand remain active
would be a liberal estimate indeed. At $120 per year, that brings in
$600,000. Now, a few people, none of whom hang around on line much, do pay
collect Telenet charges to call Portal, on which Portal turns at the
extreme most 10c/hr. If five hundred of their customers call that way and
are on about eight hours per month average (twelve would be the maximum,
for beyond twelve hours per month they are better off using P C Pursuit),
that comes to $4800 per year.
As for Portal's own connect charges, the one area of which I know that had
an hourly surcharge failed quite rapidly and the other never got under way.
After all, people use Portal instead of its competitors in order to avoid the
ticking meter more than for any other reason.
There are also sign-up fees, $15 per account. Referred accounts get the
referring customer a $5 bounty. Phony credit cards mean never collecting
the $15 (and ending up eating the collect Telenet charges that the offender
runs up), and let's say that, well, six thousand accounts in not quite
three years with some acceleration make, say, a current rate of 3500 new
accounts per year? If 20% are referrals, where Portal collects only $10,
and I should think that I'm erring on the side of overestimating revenue
again, that comes to $49,000, shall we say?
So, there is about $654,000 annual revenue apparent here. Some of the
organizations that have areas on Portal might pay for the space. I find it
impossible to imagine that those would push my already high estimate into
the eight- or even seven-figure range. Whatever they pay, is that revenue
to be considered in a discussion about reselling Usenet?
So as a Portal customer I find the figures from Mr. Kleinpaste's friend's
envelope to require an extreme stretch of the imagination. And we haven't
even begun to consider the expenses against that revenue.
I don't know what the envelope owner or Mr. Kleinpaste were thinking at the
time, but I can easily see how readers of his article will neglect to
allocate for Portal's other offerings besides its Usenet gateway and read
his article to say that Portal turns gets figures annually for Usenet.
At least six figures? Yes. Probably seven? A weak maybe. Possibly
eight? No blinking way.
If anyone wishes to reply in email, please direct the response to my Portal
account rather than to Jolnet.
David_W...@cup.portal.com ... sun!portal!cup.portal.com!David_W_Tamkin
Disclaimer: I speak solely from my own observations as a Portal customer.
David W. Tamkin Post Office Box 567542 Norridge, Illinois 60656-7542
dat...@jolnet.orpk.il.us Jolnet Public Access Unix GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN
...!killer!jolnet!dattier Orland Park, Illinois CIS: 73720,1570
Anyone on Jolnet who agrees with me is welcome to speak up on his or her own.
Daniel Hinojosa
>In article <24...@cuuxb.ATT.COM> d...@cuuxb.UUCP (Dennis L. Mumaugh) writes:
>I do
>not think Brad should use articles posted to rec.humor in his annual book
>without first asking the poster, (hopefully he does, or will in future).
This is an issue I take with Brad also. I have posted an article to
rec.humor and much to my surprise it showed up in r.h.f. .
I probably wouldn't care with the exception that I posted the article
in rot13. When Brad posted it to r.h.f., it was not rot13 and still
had my name on it. This offends my better senses because I am still
responsible for the article.
I used my judgement, right or wrong, to do all that I could to pro-
tect myself from any backlash the article may bring. Brad sees my
posting, likes it, it's a slow day on r.h.f., so he uses it. But
not the way I posted it.
I have taken this up with Brad to no avail other than his promise
to in the future make a notation that if the article was posted
origanially in rot13. I seem to only be able to protect myself by
using a copyright on all of my articles to r.h., which I don't really
want to do, but from all I've heard and from responses to questions
posed here, I have no other choice.
The long end of this is of course that it almost seems that Brad
basically gets "the best of rec.humor" for his book. I personally
think this is somewhat of an abuse of the net. But, that is my
opinion.
--
=====================================================================
email - uunet!ucsd!hp-sdd!hinojosa \ / uunet!hplabs!hp-sdd!hinojosa
---------------------------- ---==( o )==--- ----------------------
Jesus saves..but Gretzky gets the rebound! He shoots. HE SCOOORES!!!
Peter da Silva
continually get notes from people that such-and-such an evil company is
including my program in a compilation and *charging* people for it!
Horrors...
Sometimes it's taken me several exchanges to explain to these people that
(1) What these companies are doing is legal.
(2) What's more, it's ethical.
(3) And I approve of it.
And then to try to convince them that I have good reasons for taking this
view. Oh well. At least they have the courtesy to ask me before blasting said
company in public for *ripping me off*.
The more people get to see my program, the better off I am, and the better
off they are. If the only access they have is via Compuserve, then I certainly
don't want to deprive them of it.
--
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Work: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, pe...@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. `-_-'
Home: bigtex!texbell!sugar!peter, pe...@sugar.uu.net. 'U`
Opinions may not represent the policies of FICC or the Xenix Support group.
Karl Kleinpaste
| [I posited on the profitability of Portal]
I wonder if the owner of that envelope knows much about Portal firsthand.
Very little.
[A discussion on what is known about Portal income, firsthand.]
At least six figures? Yes. Probably seven? A weak maybe. Possibly
eight? No blinking way.
I stand corrected, and offer my apologies for apparent misinformation.
I was not attempting to abuse Portal, but to point out that relative
profitability is in no way related to presence on the Usenet.
I was not referring to any personal friend's calculation, but rather
to one posted to the net some months back in one of the ritual-abuse-
of-Portal episodes that plagues the Usenet. The specific instance was
when Portal was being claimed to be an abusive member of Usenet
through, I believe, refusal to use `real IDs' on the network, followed
shortly thereafter by the highly responsible action on the part of
Portal management of amending their user guidelines/policies.
--Karl
Mark Gresham
>free elsewhere -- well, so ? Perhaps what they're really selling is
>something else -- a *convenient form of access* to the material. Is there
>some objection to that?
>
exactly an "uninformed-user-friendly" environment. I think tose
of us who take to computers like ducks to water have a tendacy to
forget that; most people still need an environment that
spoon-feeds the "how to" to them, along with the warm fuzzies that
come with graphic enhancements. The average non-hacker is
basically approaching the computer as a sophisticated video-game;
what they're paying for is the "nice upholstry" and the
convenient form of access.
>You can say right in your article, as I'm doing here, that if the reader
>doesn't like paying Compuserve fees to read it, there are other places
>where it's available. The informed reader may choose to seek out other
>places. If they don't, then Compuserve must be adding value to it in
>some way, and therefore earning their profit *from that*.
>
Having tried the CompuServe (tm) thing myself
out of morbid curiosity, I think that most of what they do can be
done much better in terms of informational return per minute or $
in other ways, with or without computer (more often the latter).
They seem to be a "Readers Digest" of the BBS world. If *I* were
them, I certainly would argue that I was chargeing for the
"convenient access".
BTW, don't we get e-mail access to their users? (Assuming, of
course, we know their address.) I know that
ATTmail users can send e-mail to us through registered gates
(not that I've found any) but not vice-versa.
Patrick A. Townson
>pat...@chinet.chi.il.us writes:
> Now in the example cited, here comes Compuserve; willing to take all it
>
>No, it's not, and you should stop abusing the name of an organization
>which has never even appeared here of their own will. They are not an
>example of *anything* as regards the Usenet.
>
> can get for free and re-sell the cooperative efforts of others for $6 per
> hour.
>
>CompuServe has been misused as an example so many times that it's no
>longer funny. They have been abused in absentia without justification
>as some sort of evil presence Out There Someplace from which everyone
>is desperately trying to hide Our Good Work.
I will not comment on Our Good Work. But I will point out that CompuServe
has behaved in an arrogant manner on several occassions; and they have
committed acts which some attornies might consider illegal. They have
received numerous public domain software programs from their subscribers,
given to them in good faith, and used their compilation-copyright to
effectively remove the program from circulation *outside their system*
for good. Ask a few BBS sysops who have had the 'audacity' to download
a public domain program from CIS and put it on their free, public service
BBS for their users what happened to them. They got cease and desist
letters from an attorney for CIS.
They have no compunction against interception of email; and non-delivery
of same when the contents are displeasing to them. Just like Bill McGowan
of MCI Mail, if they don't care for your email, you are as good as gone
as a subscriber. At least Chairman McGowan is brazen enough to admit it
openly: 'We at MCI are not required to service customers we don't like.'
Even though a subscriber to CompuServe is entitled to use any of the SIGS
available; a subscriber still has to pass muster with people like Alex
Krisloff in order to actually *retain* access to SIGS dealing with social
issues discussion. More than one user has suddenly found access to a SIG
was suddenly denied after having had a fight with the moderator the day
before. If the expelled user then makes an appeal to the Product Manager
or some other executive at CIS, access to the SIG may or may not be
restored.
There have been allegations by users of CIS' CB program that private
conversations between users during the night, a/k/a 'compusex' are monitored
for kicks by the operator(s) on local terminals, and that an operator
will occassionally interject a typed remark on the screen of one of the
people in the conversation, leading them to accuse the other person of
having 'said that thing'.
>Y'know, if I packaged up a whole mess of this discussion and foisted
>it off on a few interesting people I know across town, I imagine that
>there's a couple of Usenetters who just might get informative notes
>from people whose titles end in "attorney at law," which notes would
>make fascinating comments regarding defamation and slander and libel
>and whatever other legalese applies to this situation.
If you please! So that there is no misunderstanding, my name is Patrick
A. Townson. My address is-
Patrick A. Townson
60690-1570
That is quite sufficient. I get mail every day and I *always* sign for my
registered and certified mail. Do tell the attorney I'll gladly accept
Service anytime.
>whose title ends in 'attorney at law'....
Jeeze H. Don't you see my knees shaking while I load my pants at that
threat? The last time I counted, attornies were a dime a dozen. The USA
is full of them.
>*That* is my point: You have no idea what goes on inside CompuServe.
>None whatever. I have some, having dealt with them fairly extensively
>for quite some time, knowing more than a couple of people who work[ed]
>inside it, and having had to deal at a non-trivial level with the
>political machinery which it embodies, up to and including the level
>of people with job titles like Chief Technical Officer.
Oh, you bet I know plenty. I was on CIS in 1980-81-82 myself, and still
remain friends with a couple people who have moderator-like functions on
a couple of SIGS.
>Be aware that CompuServe barely knows that Usenet exists.
Compuserve barely knows that *anyone* exists besides themselves. If there
were such a thing as a map of the universe in a file on CIS somewhere, I
dare say it would show a cluster in the center called 'CompuServe' with
lots of small round things going in orbit around it.
> There is something to be said about the importance of distributing
> information; yes, we do want our messages to be widely disseminated, and
> our information FREELY available to others.
>
>If you were to address a definition of `free' in order to make the
>question meaningful, especially as regards availability -vs-
>economics, you might be going somewhere. I consider that you have
>not. For myself, I post certain things out of a desire to make
>information available, without any thought whatever to the improvement
>of my economic condition. I do not care that, e.g., Portal's owners
>are very probably making a small (or large) fortune off this sort of
>thing, and that my contributions are helping in that occurrence.
My economic condition is not relevant either. But the fact that I give
something for free which someone else chooses to resell is relevant. And
neither Portal nor Chinet -- and certainly not Chinet -- are making any
money from my stuff.
>All this suggests an equally important point regarding your reference
>to whether "we...want our messages...disseminated," seeing as how the
>possibility of getting an agreement out of <however many Usenet
>participants there are> to <do anything at all> is zero - just ponder
>the difficulty of getting a decision made about whether a new
>newsgroup should be created.
But none the less, the decision does get made eventually.
>I suggest that large commercial entities such as CompuServe will never
>gateway Usenet into their systems, not because they don't wish to have
>to ponder the possibility of pursuing legal action against little
>semantic nothings like you and me, but rather because they are more
>concerned that YOU will abuse THEM - just as you have already. How
>would YOU like to enter this environment at this point, if your name
>had been subjected to as much abuse as CompuServe's has up to now?
I like your description of yourself as a 'semantic nothing'. It does not
apply to me, however. You I would say yes. It fits you to a 'T'.
> We overlook/ignore modest user fees of the $10 per month Portal type or
> the $50 per year (frequently written off) Chinet type.
>
>Why? What is it about $10/month that constitutes a "modest" fee?
>What are you arguing, other than an issue of degree?
$10 per month is *pennies* per hour based on typical Portal subscriber
usage. I know. I was a subscriber for two years. The users sit in chat
for hours on end. Chinet's $50 per year comes to $4.17 per month; again
for users who spend an hour or two per day on the box. How much is this
per hour? In your opinion, does 'free' have to literally mean without
any charge whatsoever? Should Portal and Chinet also supply the phone line
and the modem for their subscribers?
>Is it not possible that, given the set of services which CServe
>offers, $6/hr is really quite "modest" as well? If you are not aware
>(from other comments, I don't believe that you are - please correct me
>if I'm wrong), CServe offers a whole heck of a lot more than
>Usenettish newsgroups/forums. Although I personally do not find them
>useful, there is a huge variety of other services (stock exchange
>access, travel services, VAST software repositories, email with
>gateways to certain other systems including MCI, the list goes on - I
>am not trying to make a commercial but rather to stress a point) which
>CServe offers; these services make it quite a valuable resource to
>some 438,000 (last time I asked) subscribers. These people put up
>with CServe's charges without nary a sigh because of the value they
>perceive they have gained by it. They evidently consider those fees
>"modest." Whose version of "modest" is correct here? Yours? Why?
But in fact, CIS makes its profit (last time I asked) from CB Simulator
and its funny uncle 'compusex'. Does anyone *really* use the Collier's
Encyclopedia or the Official Airline Guide, both of which carry a surcharge
by the way? My version of 'modest' is correct. Why? Simple math: a few
cents per hour is less than $6 per hour. Are YOU suggesting the extra
features offered on CIS are worth several hundred percent more in usage
fees? CB Simulator carries the rest of CompuServe, you know.
> But I do not think we can afford to overlook the
> commercial resale of our cooperative, goodwill efforts on Usenet.
>
>You already have. Can you say with any surety that your "cooperative,
>goodwill efforts" are not *already* being resold commercially
>somewhere?
No, of course there is no absolute guarentee of this, short of having one
or more persons constantly scanning other media, printed or electronic,
looking for duplications. We believe they are not being resold.
Tell me, Is CompuServe already on the Usenet? How sure
>are you of the answer you just gave? There's a 3B2/400 in my basement
>that takes a full newsfeed off of osu-cis, and it speaks with
>CompuServe for certain purposes every hour on the hour - how do you
>know that I am not already feeding CompuServe? (I speak now in an
>abstract sense, of course, to drive a point home. No, I do not feed
>CompuServe. But maybe someone else does - have you asked
>er...@snark.uu.net? And if he doesn't, does someone else besides?)
I believe the people who handle Usenet traffic are doing so in an
honorable way. Perhaps, based on your remark, er...@snark.uu.net should
have HIS 'attorney at law' contact YOURS.
>Just how profitable is Portal? Do you know? I doubt its proprietors
>are the least interested in telling you just how profitable they are,
>but a couple of months back I saw someone's back-of-the-envelope
>calculation which suggested that Portal pulls in a horrendous amount
>of money, at least 6 figures, probably 7 and possibly 8. Again, you
>are arguing degree where you cannot even be sure of the scales on
>which you're standing, and you're ending up with the malignment of an
>organization which is entirely *innocent* due to its complete lack of
>presence on this network! How dare you?!?
Its time for Math 101: General Arithmetic. Please take off your shoes
so when we reach ten you can count with me to twenty. At $10 per month,
how many subscribers are required to obtain $100,000, the smallest possible
'six digit figure'? That would require 10,000 subscribers, wouldn't it?
The smallest possible 'seven digit figure', 1,000,000 would require 100,000
people paying $10, wouldn't it? Are these six, seven and eight digit
figures you are tossing around supposed to represent monthly revenue or
yearly revenue? If yearly, then we would divide by 12 and come up with 833
subscribers generating minimal six digit revenue, or 8333 subscribers
generating minimal seven digit revenue. Of course, 83,333 subscribers
would be required to generate minimal eight digit revenue, if you were
talking annual revenue and not monthly. I can assure you Portal does not
have 8333 or 83,333 subscribers. In any event, that six or seven digit
figure would be GROSS INCOME, would it not?
So let's say there are a couple thousand subscribers,and the gross income
per year is in the $240,000 range, which I think is stretching it a
little, but let's go with it. An operation with 2000 subscribers which
operates 24 hours per day will have at least one person there around the
clock, right? So considering 8 hour shifts; 40 hour weeks with no overtime,
we have a five person payroll. In all the times I have called on the phone
I've never reached anyone there but John Little, Phil Sih, or once, a young
lady who was 'customer service'. Even three people making modest wages
would require ($25 x 3) = $75,000 per year. Five people would be $125,000.
Since they have all taken vows of poverty, they don't actually get a salary,
but merely the enjoyment of answering stupid email letters from subscribers.
How much per year does Pacific Bell get for a dozen dialup phone lines per
month/year? How much does Telenet charge for a PAD? Why nothing, of course!
Telenet gives them away free, under the theory of constitutional law
espoused by single-server BBS users everywhere: I have the right to be
entertained on your computer at your expense. Ask any sysop!
Naturally, Sun gives away computers and peripherals to worthy causes. They
would never think of sending invoices out to the nice people at Portal.
And maintainence contracts? Who needs maintainence, anyway? The landlord is
contributing the building; and the local electric works provides the juice.
All free, of course.
Try to be for real, okay? Whenever $10 per month per user on a time sharing
computer system can be parlayed into even a very low 'six digit figure'
PROFIT for the proprietors, a lot of people will want to know how it was
done. And I don't know how many subscribers Portal has (other than they
do not have 83,000), and I do not know what their expenses are. But you
should be able to see, even with your shoes on, how absurd your statement
was on its face.
>I saw that BIX has a machine on Usenet (bixpb; cf. <20[03456]@bixpb>,
>mostly in news.* newsgroups; <200@bixpb> is their news.newsites
>announcement of existence), and one of their people said that they are
>intending to gateway certain things into BIX. Before you continue
>this baseless tirade against an organization which doesn't even know
>you exist, why don't you address your complaints in very explicit,
>specific form to this other entity which has actually published its
>intention to do precisely the things you fear? Look in news.misc,
><205@bixpb>, and address your comments to bixpb!bensmith.
As a matter of fact, I have written to Ben Smith. I told him who I was,
and my area of responsibility on Usenet. I told him that if his
organization wanted to use the material within the news.group I administer,
a couple things would have to happen first: we would need to have a long
and candid conversation about TWO-WAY SHARING between us. There would
have to be a working, convenient and easy to use address FOR ME ON HIS
SYSTEM where his users could respond to items in 'my' news.group and
add new contributions of their own. I told him if he was willing to talk
in those terms, I would present the matter to the net at large here. I
told him I was not interested in a one way feed.
> I'd have to say stay clear of feeding commercial networks unless and until
> we, meaning the Usenet community, have full control of the output, and the
>
>There are some people who would like to have full control of the
>output of your mouth and keyboard. And they'd be more justified in
>their attack on you on the basis of what you've said/written than you
>are in your attacks on the still-innocent CompuServe.
Still innocent CompuServe? As the late Jack Benny would phrase it,
"Really, Mary"...
And as for attacks on me, Oscar Wilde expressed my views completely when
he said he could care less what others on Usenet said about him as long
as they spelled his name correctly. Or was it the London newspapers he
was speaking about? I don't remember.
>PS- I have absolutely, positively no commercial affiliation with
>CompuServe. I was, for most of a year, the original technical sysop
>on its UNIX Forum, a forum which I helped create and a position which
>I held as a volunteer - not paid. I gave it up when it became obvious
>that I could not dedicate the time to serve its users properly. I
>also am working to the completion of an Internet-CompuServe mail
>gateway, which again is a dollars-free effort on my part. However,
>many CompuServe employees are my friends, and whatever the technical
>and political foibles be that occur inside CompuServe, they do not
>deserve the extensive abuse which has been heaped upon them
>gratuitously from the Usenet.
So now the truth is known. We see the axe you have to grind. You'd love
to see your gateway project be a success. I'll bet you would! Has CIS
said how much of a cut they will give you on each peice of email you
pass? Will it be the same arrangement they have with MCI? Why did you
save this last paragraph till the end of your message rather than say
it in the beginning? Afraid too many people would 'n' past the rest
of it? You sure could have saved me a lot of time typing a response!
Mark Brader
> can get for free and re-sell the cooperative efforts of others for $6 per
> hour. There is something to be said about the importance of distributing
> information; yes, we do want our messages to be widely disseminated, and
> our information FREELY available to others.
But the people you're complaining about are not restricting the availability
of the information by the "free" channels that you want. They are adding an
additional channel, which people can choose to pay them for if they wish.
I still do not see how anyone can object to that.
If you wish to block transmission of material that you composed or compiled,
then the Larry Wall Model Copyright Notice seems* sufficient. Of course,
if you restrict transmission of something by notice, and then proceed to
put it into a distribution channel yourself, it's understood that you are
intending distribution to wherever that channel goes and no further.
The rec.humor.funny problem arose because Brad appeared to be asking for
the preexisting distribution channel that he was using to be modified to
match the distribution that he wanted. This, of course, is another story.
Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, m...@sq.com
"The conversation never became heated, which would have been difficult
in any argument where there is a built-in cooling-down period between
any remark and its answer." -- Hal Clement, STAR LIGHT
Fred Buck
In article <77...@chinet.chi.il.us> pat...@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson) writes:
> [counterflame about how Compuserve bites the Big One]
I detect some unwarranted heatedness on both sides here.
First, it's expectable, if not pleasing, to see people still engaging in
emotionally-driven putdowns like referring to Compuserve's "bozo users."
In the microcomputer world, the same tendencies engendered things like the
"Trash-80" label and all the bad things TRS-80 people had to say about
stupid designs like the Apple microcomputer and about how CP/M was a mere
program-loader. Unix people have had similar things to say about the IBM
personal computers, and they're right in this insofar as the IBM personal
computers don't have an, ahem, operating system comparable to Unix. On the
other hand, there's a lot of functionality that exists in software for IBM
personal computers despite all the deficiencies of the operating system. I
know of no computer system that can be arbitrarily dismissed as useless.
Denigrating users of any such system solely on that account is just
externalized self-flagellation.
Second, I think the same thing is surfacing here about Compuserve. I'll
introduce myself up front, so as not to offend Mr. Townson: I am the
primary sysop of the Compuserve Tangent Forum, which is in essence a
nationwide BBS for the Tangent Group. The Tangent Group is a loose
association of business users of Tandy computer products, formed back when
Tandy was the only manufacturer of a PC-level Xenix machine. Nowadays, the
association with Tandy is more tenuous. However, over the half-decade or
more that the Tangent Forum has existed, quite a number of businessmen and
Unix/Xenix consultants have formed links through the Compuserve Tangent
Forum, and have benefited each other not only by public exchange of
technical information but also by the formation of referral networks. Few
if any of these people have the time or patience to sift through the rafts
of Usenet verbiage to get a specific answer to a specific problem. And for
few of those is it possible to >get< such an answer from the Usenet. There
are tens of thousands of businesses running some variant of Small Computer
Company's "FilePro" database software in the U.S.A.; many of these have
questions about how to do this or that, or fix this or that bug; is the
Usenet of great help here? In this respect, the Compuserve Tangent Forum
serves a need that the Usenet doesn't address.
I dwell on this because the Tangent Forum is simply one example. Most
retail users of Compuserve don't live in worlds where Usenet is an option.
The vast majority of Macintosh users, for instance, feel about Unix the way
you'd feel about smallpox, and then you can add in the Atari and Commodore
and Apple users, and the people who don't care about hardware or software
but who have special interests, such as broadcasting professionals, motor
racing reporters, and a list too long for me to make any representative
illustration. Many of the non-computer-related areas depend on
up-to-the-minute reports from the field, not by Compuserve people but by
people hooked into the Forums, of which there are now something like 300.
I know of at least a dozen Compuserve Forums where sysops and members phone
in time-sensitive information from pay phones on location with laptop
computers, nationwide. And then there are areas such as the Disability
Forum, where the disabled can reach potentially critical information
and support from others, either themselves disabled or with pathways
to needed info, where constraints like Usenet propagation delays
aren't acceptable: sometimes you need something to cite to person X
the next morning. Dismissing all of this as "basically compusex" is
speaking too quickly.
Software is available to minimize connect time when using Compuserve
Forums, and Compuserve not only tolerates such software but encourages it.
Many people can achieve full bandwidth for several chosen Forums at a cost
of something like $20 to $30 per month, or less, using these tools.
The additional facilities besides the Forums are less significant, but I
question your assertion that the Citizen's-Band-Simulator and "compusex"
dominate Compuserve's revenues. (I speak here of course about the
Compuserve Information Service, which is a retail operation, not about
Compuserve Incorporated, which encompasses a great deal more.) In point of
fact, the bulk of Compuserve's retail revenues comes from Forum use, even
given the automated navigator programs referred to in the previous
paragraph. And the use of the other facilities that you deride is more
common than you seem to believe. I myself have paid to use the Grolier
encyclopedia (the cost is something like $14 for a six-month subscription)
and I have a friend, who reads the Usenet regularly, who has saved
substantial sums using the OAG instead of making direct reservations.
I simply don't see what the problem is here, between you and Karl. Karl is
almost certainly correct that Compuserve has no interest in Usenet.
Compuserve does claim a compilation copyright, but its enforcement of this
copyright is not so heavy-handed as you suggest. Only one private BBS
sysop that I know of has got a letter from Compuserve counsel, and that BBS
sysop had been publishing on his BBS a program taken from the
Apple-Computer section of Compuserve that the program's author had said was
copyrighted. The action by Compuserve was prompted by the author's
complaint to the Apple-Computer sysop. Compuserve allows anybody to
distribute stuff from Compuserve for free, provided that it's not packaged
as something direct from Compuserve (for example, "This archive contains
the entire contents of the Compuserve XYZ Forum File Libraries"). And of
course, Compuserve cannot forbid any republication expressly sanctioned by
the holder of the copyright. When I write a program and upload it to a
Compuserve Forum Library, and I say in the text that I permit anyone to use
the text for any purpose for free, Compuserve's compilation copyright is
subsumed in my express license. (The same would be true, of course, about
an article in rec.humor.funny: if the original article says anyone can copy
it, then anyone can copy it, no matter what Brad says.)
As Karl observes, why all this Compuserve bashing? There hasn't been any
provocation that I've been able to see. Why not just take your own stream,
and let different streams drift along as they will unless they impinge on
yours?
I derive no income from either Compuserve or the Tangent Group, which is a
not-for-profit corporation. Compuserve and the Usenet serve different
purposes, and I use both. I am not affiliated in any way with Compuserve,
nor with the Tangent Group except that I am a member of the latter, and
perform administrative services on Compuserve for the Tangent Forum there,
out of the goodness of my heart.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred Buck { uunet, rutgers }!hombre!marob!rogol
{ uunet, rutgers }!hombre!magpie!lemur!rogol
{ uunet, rutgers }!ro...@marob.masa.com
Compuserve: 73327,3604
Sysop, Tangent Forum (GO TANGENT)
------------------------------------------------------------------
Glen Overby
>Perhaps Brad's fears could be allayed by the establishment of a not-for-
>profit corporation called the Usenet Cooperative Trust, Inc. or some
>similar name. Have someone like Gene Spafford and one or two other
>people as officers of the corporation and trustees.
Once such a legal entity has been created, it can be sued.
Just imagine what would have happened if [JEDR, MES, *] could have sued "the
net". They would have wond a rather nice bounty from the courts. As the
net stands, it is logistically impossible to sue.
Brad has turned into a net.bully. It's hard to believe that this is the
same guy who I submitted a joke (albeit, not a very good one) to a year or
so ago. I guess the Brad-Bashing has gotten to him.
Glen Overby <ncov...@plains.nodak.edu>
uunet!ndsuvax!ncoverby
ncoverby@ndsuvax (Bitnet)
Glen Overby
>and news.announce.newusers and .... And I'll publish a book on
>Everything You Wanted to Know About UNIX and Were Afraid to Ask.
>I'll include Doug Gwyn's articles about UNIX and System V, and
>Guy Harris' on how things work, and of course John Mashey and
>dmr@alice on how things were in the old days, and the concensus
>on what good coding standards, etc. Publish the 100 most asked
>UNIX questions. Hints and kinks for new users. And not one original
>line of text. Hmmmm, I wonder if markov3 or mvs@alice is available
>to help?
That selection of groups would probably pretty interesting reading. I'd
expect it to be better more complete and thus a better reference than my
quota-limited ~News directory. If you price it decently like I think Brad
did with his jokebook, I think you'd get a lot of buyers.
While we're on this subject, what about Usenix's "Best of Usenet" tape? I
recall reading that license, and it stated in no uncertain terms that it was
NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION.
Craig Jackson drilex1
it, it should be in the references line.
I just wanted to note that Compuserve does not prosecute, nor do they have
standing to prosecute, any body who downloads a few things and places those
things on their own bulletin board. They will prosecute somebody who
claims to have everything that Compuserve has. By downloading all, or
substantially all, of a given set of Compuserve files, and then announcing
the contents of their BBS as such, they are deriving benefit from
Compuserve's work in collecting & advertising their collection.
Also, I think there are a number of specific agreements with Compuserve which
allow collective downloading--I believe that Netwire is done that way.
On a note about BIX use of Usenet, I have been trying to talk the BIX
people into a connection for years. They've always considered the
major difficulty was contacting each poster for his/her permission to
use his/her posting on BIX. (They take implied copyright seriously.)
Note that any cross-feed back from BIX would also require such permission.
The BIX agreement doesn't give them permission to publish your words on
Usenet. (It does, however, contain specific clauses allowing them to use
your words on BIX and in Byte magazine.)
--
Craig Jackson
{harvard,mit-eddie,ll-xn,axiom}!drilex!{dricej,dricejb}
Mark Gresham
>
>I will not comment on Our Good Work. But I will point out that CompuServe
>has behaved in an arrogant manner on several occassions; and they have
>committed acts which some attornies might consider illegal. They have
>received numerous public domain software programs from their subscribers,
>given to them in good faith, and used their compilation-copyright to
>effectively remove the program from circulation *outside their system*
>for good. Ask a few BBS sysops who have had the 'audacity' to download
>a public domain program from CIS and put it on their free, public service
>BBS for their users what happened to them. They got cease and desist
>letters from an attorney for CIS.
>
a true or false allegation.]
This is an example of why I think we should question closely what
constitutes a "compilation copyright." If someone (anyone) is
simply collecting individual items and spitting them back out as a
bundle, have they given "sufficient creative input" to that
compilation to deny use and re-distribution of what was intended
(in good faith) to be public domain materials?
What happens if public domain program X gets compiled into bundle
Y, but also is distributed by originator of X in other manners,
I'd like to see the "compiler's" attorneys prove that a user had
no other way of getting program X. Remember the originator has
the right to allow anyone to obtain or use a copy (especially if,
as has been posed, the originator's copyright is implicit by law,
even when not explicitly stated). What if if I have obtained
program X out of bundle Y, and the originator of the program has
said "go ahead, use and distribute it"??? Think about it.
We really need to consider what the limitations are (and should
be) on "compilation copyrights."
--Mark Gresham
"Distribution and replication of the contents of this posting may
not be restricted or prohibited in any way by any moderator,
compiler, or electronic information service incorporating it into
any other body of works." (So there! Pfffptt!!!)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mark Gresham ARTSNET Atlanta, GA, USA
E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham
or: artsnet!mgre...@gatech.edu
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mark Gresham
>Unix people have had similar things to say about the IBM
>personal computers, and they're right in this insofar as the IBM personal
>computers don't have an, ahem, operating system comparable to Unix.
Damn, Fred, here I am under the mistaken assumption that I have
System V Unix with a large kernal running on my Packard Bell AT286.
Must be my imagination. :-)
But then, I've never really taken much part in the infamous
"Hardware Wars." Basically self-taught, I began learning on a
Commodore 64 simply because it was there, and stopped only when it
decided to self-destruct (Oh what a video show that was! :-))
I turned to IBM-PCs because they were available along with the
software (and so was I to learn/do volunteer work) and I taught
myself assembly language (not knowing I wasn't supposed to do
that). Just over a year ago, I was introduced to Unix (once
again, because it was there and so was I), and golly gosh,
here I am a system admin. Funny thing, life.
Had I followed other musicians/composers, I might have been led
down the Mac road, but I took the route of least advertising;
otherwise, I'd not have found Unix or Usenet.
I'm certainly better off for it, in my estimation.
--Mark Gresham
"DOS all, folks!"
Karl Kleinpaste
[Paraphrased: `Does spitting back out a repackaging of a bunch of
contributed items constitute "sufficient creative input" to justify
compilation copyright?']
"Creative input" is not a criterion for establishment of compilation
copyright. Value added is. The large commercial "information
services" base their compilation copyrights on that idea - they
provide the means by which to get at their particular pile of info.
What happens if public domain program X gets compiled into bundle
Y, but also is distributed by originator of X in other manners,
I'd like to see the "compiler's" attorneys prove that a user had
no other way of getting program X. Remember the originator has
the right to allow anyone to obtain or use a copy (especially if,
as has been posed, the originator's copyright is implicit by law,
even when not explicitly stated). What if if I have obtained
program X out of bundle Y, and the originator of the program has
said "go ahead, use and distribute it"??? Think about it.
We really need to consider what the limitations are (and should
be) on "compilation copyrights."
You're chasing shadows. The people who are supposed to worry about
what the limitations should be and are, as regards compilation
copyright, have already done so.
For the specific example cited, note CompuServe's publicly stated
position on the matter. This is excerpted from the copyright
information which CompuServe publishes to its subscribers:
|--IF I UPLOAD A SOFTWARE PROGRAM I'VE DEVELOPED TO COMPUSERVE, DO I STILL
|RETAIN OWNERSHIP OF THE PROGRAM?
|
| Yes, you do. CompuServe's compilation copyright does NOT supersede
|individual ownership rights or copyrights to any of the material furnished to
|the Service by subscribers or information providers.
| For example, a subscriber who creates a program and uploads it to a
|CompuServe forum data library STILL OWNS that program, and may upload it to
|other information services and bulletin board systems.
| It should be noted, however, that CompuServe cannot grant any
|redistribution rights for materials copyrighted by the author, unless
|specifically authorized to do so, CompuServe does not own the material or the
|copyright. These rights must be obtained directly from the author.
The issue, then, is whether a BBS operator is downloading an
occasional file for re-upload to his/her BBS, or whether s/he is
strip-mining CompuServe for wholesale BBS redistribution. CompuServe
doesn't care about the former, and would probably(?) pursue action in
the latter.
If this is still such a burning issue for everyone, I can post the
whole copyright notice. I doubt CompuServe would mind :-).
--Karl
Fred Buck
>Unix people have had similar things to say about the IBM
>personal computers, and they're right in this insofar as the IBM personal
>computers don't have an, ahem, operating system comparable to Unix.
In article <1...@artsnet.UUCP> mgre...@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) writes:
>Damn, Fred, here I am under the mistaken assumption that I have
>System V Unix with a large kernal running on my Packard Bell AT286.
>Must be my imagination. :-)
I expressed myself poorly. I meant to convey that the IBM machines as
marketed by IBM, which is to say with MSDOS, are not comparable to
Unix-based systems. Obviously 80286 and 80308-based machines are
capable of running small Unix installations satisfactorily. My point
was, and remains, that it serves nobody to thumb the nose or make
rude gestures at someone else merely because the someone else uses
a different sort of hardware or software, or patronizes this or that
host system.
Mark Gresham
>mgre...@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) writes:
> [Paraphrased: `Does spitting back out a repackaging of a bunch of
> contributed items constitute "sufficient creative input" to justify
> compilation copyright?']
>
>"Creative input" is not a criterion for establishment of compilation
>copyright. Value added is. The large commercial "information
>services" base their compilation copyrights on that idea - they
>provide the means by which to get at their particular pile of info.
>
because he provides the means by which to get to that particular
pile of books? :-) Interesting idea.
[Karl, as I've mentioned before, I have no problem with CompuServe
chargings their clients for the means of access to a body of public
domain works.]
I think I should clarify that I get "significant creative
input" is the music and literary fields (the compilation of
r.h.f. being one of literary issue); I wouldn't doubt that a
different term with small adjustments of meaning would be used
with software. The point of both terms is: "Did you really do anything
significant with the stuff you compiled that justifies claiming
intellectual property rights?"
My beef is not with whether or not CompuServe's claim is
ultimately valid, or whether or not Brad's claim is ultimately
valid. But rather that there is an unwillingness all around to
spell out the essentials of compilation, and what about those
things justify claiming intellectual property rights.
So far, the answers that appear are essentially:
"I worked very hard."
"I just know in my heart I can claim copyright." and
"We let people get stuff."