Deja News
Richard Gilliam
I was dismayed to discover that posts that I have made here and only
here are being archived in Deja News. Does participation in sff.net
newsgroups somehow impair copyright to the point that Deja News can,
without my permission, reprint my posts made here? Absent some sort
of agreement between sff.net and Deja News that I'm unaware of, this
would seem to be a clear-cut case of Deja News copying content to its
site without the permission of the content creators. Deja News makes
money by copying content created on Usenet and selling advertising
space that appears alongside the copied content. Unlike Usenet,
sff.net is a proprietary service with non-propagating newsgroups. I
strongly question that Deja News has the right to copy (and sell for
the use of advertisers) posts made here. What is sff.net's position
on this?
Thanks,
Richard
Jeff Hecht
Richard Gilliam) wrote:
> I was dismayed to discover that posts that I have made here and only
> here are being archived in Deja News. Does participation in sff.net
> newsgroups somehow impair copyright to the point that Deja News can,
> without my permission, reprint my posts made here? Absent some sort
> of agreement between sff.net and Deja News that I'm unaware of, this
> would seem to be a clear-cut case of Deja News copying content to its
> site without the permission of the content creators. [clipped]
I've been wondering about the copyright implications of this practice
myself. How will this and indexing of web sites be impacted by the
(proposed or passed?) new law covering electronic copyright? I have an
uneasy feeling this is gonna keep a lot of lawyers busy for a while. --
Jeff
--
Jeff Hecht, writer of science fact and (a little) fiction
Read "The Crystal Highway" in Odyssey #1
URL: http://www.sff.net/people/Jeff.Hecht
claguire
Richard Gilliam wrote:
>
> I was dismayed to discover that posts that I have made here and only
I went to DejaNews and searched and searched, and I couldn't find any
posts of mine. Perhaps someone has been forwarding your posts,
unbeknownst to you?
I would think, since sff.net doesn't provide a "newsfeed" to other
servers, that Deja News would have a harder time justifying the
distribution of hte files.
Camille
claguire
Ah, I finally found some sff.net posts on Deja News! I searched the
heirarchy; They only carry a few sff.net groups. None are ones I post
on. That explains why I coulnd't find any of my posts.
This is annoying. While I actually like the DejaNews service, and I
think they do have a right to act as a database for the freely
distributed newsgroups, I think they should draw the line at groups that
aren't distributed. I like the fact that the only people who post here
are people who _choose_ to be here.
Camille
Dona Vaughn
Wow! this is really funny! I had to bop over and check and I found about
40 posts from various groups I'd posted to under dvaughn (before I joined
sff.net), all mixed in with some other dvaughn who calls himself Dr. Flame
and posts on freemasonery. Plus I found several more posts of mine under
this incarnation. *Plus* the first two posts in *this* thread!!! There's
a deal to set for either standard or complete search. Complete gives a
bunch of sff.net references.
Dona
--
news://news.sff.net/sff.people.dona-vaughn
claguire <cam...@sff.net> wrote in article <35983F...@sff.net>...
Doranna
I just made this discovery myself, within the week, and was going to
post something very much like this. I'm not very happy to find SFF
net posts there, but I don't know what can be done. I'm waiting for
Yog or Jade to weigh in...
--Doranna
On Mon, 29 Jun 1998 19:43:26 GMT, rgil...@netnet.net (Richard
Gilliam) wrote:
>I was dismayed to discover that posts that I have made here and only
>here are being archived in Deja News. Does participation in sff.net
>newsgroups somehow impair copyright to the point that Deja News can,
>without my permission, reprint my posts made here? Absent some sort
>of agreement between sff.net and Deja News that I'm unaware of, this
>would seem to be a clear-cut case of Deja News copying content to its
>site without the permission of the content creators. Deja News makes
>money by copying content created on Usenet and selling advertising
>space that appears alongside the copied content. Unlike Usenet,
>sff.net is a proprietary service with non-propagating newsgroups. I
>strongly question that Deja News has the right to copy (and sell for
>the use of advertisers) posts made here. What is sff.net's position
>on this?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Richard
Doranna Durgin
http://www.sff.net/people/doranna/
Wordwright Critique Service
http://www.novalearn.com/ww
Yog Sysop
Yog stirred in the depths when dor...@sff.net (Doranna)
uttered:
>I just made this discovery myself, within the week, and was going to
>post something very much like this. I'm not very happy to find SFF
>net posts there, but I don't know what can be done. I'm waiting for
>Yog or Jade to weigh in...
>
In fact, there's little we can do about that now. Let's try one
wrangle at a time.
--
James D. Macdonald
http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/
Jeffry Dwight
dor...@sff.net (Doranna) wrote:
>I just made this discovery myself, within the week, and was going to
>post something very much like this. I'm not very happy to find SFF
>net posts there, but I don't know what can be done. I'm waiting for
>Yog or Jade to weigh in...
I didn't think there was much to add. People seem to discover this every two
or three months. DejaNews is not the only place to carry a selection of SFF
Net's public groups. Several regular ISPs also mirror some newsgroups.
SFF Net is not happy about this practice, but we are still consulting with our
legal counsel about the wheretos, whyfores, and whatnots associated with the
whole issue.
In general, the SFF Net public newsgroups are public, and you should think of
them that way when you post. Any non-member can waltz in here at any time and
read the public areas. If the non-member happens to be an ISP's server, who
then reposts or mirrors the messages, there isn't much we can do to limit that
short of a restraining order or lawsuit. We are not eager to pursue those
options, especially since (a) we want goodwill, and (b) the laws are not
unambiguous.
Our intention was --and is-- that SFF Net newsgroups not be propagated
elsewhere. We have not reached a happy solution that ensures it.
- j.
John Paul Vrolyk
Jeffry Dwight wrote:
> Our intention was --and is-- that SFF Net newsgroups not be propagated
> elsewhere. We have not reached a happy solution that ensures it.
Uh...I suppose of course you've tried simply asking DejaNews or
those other ISPs not to?
--
John Paul Vrolyk j...@vrolyk.org http://www.vrolyk.org/jp/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Yea the whole world seems very strange / In a pleasant kinda way"
-- from "English Bay", by Blue Rodeo
Yog Sysop
Everyone should be aware, especially those of you who may be
reading this via a pirated feed or on Deja News, that anything
posted anywhere other than on sff.net will not appear here. The
only way to post is to actually come to news.sff.net. The other
things -- and for all I know there are discussions full of
flames and spam in sff.* groups out there -- don't ever appear
on the real, live sff.net.
Jeffry Dwight
John Paul Vrolyk <jpvr...@NULL.NET> wrote:
>Jeffry Dwight wrote:
>> Our intention was --and is-- that SFF Net newsgroups not be propagated
>> elsewhere. We have not reached a happy solution that ensures it.
>
>Uh...I suppose of course you've tried simply asking DejaNews or
>those other ISPs not to?
I won't go into specifics here in public, but yes, we have tried that
approach. We've received every answer from cheerful compliance to outright
refusal, with a couple of yeah-yeah-sures that were really brush-offs.
- j.
Richard Gilliam
That's a good suggestion, Richard, however by using that option Deja
News could claim that there is an implication that posts not marked
"No Archive" are somehow fair game for Deja New to use without express
permission.
Richard
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 14:13:25 GMT, richard....@boeing.com (Richard
R. Horton) wrote:
>rgil...@netnet.net (Richard Gilliam) wrote:
>
>>I was dismayed to discover that posts that I have made here and only
>>here are being archived in Deja News.
>
>I was annoyed to find this out too, and we discussed this somewhere
>around here a few months ago. You do have an option, one which I
>exercised on my SFF-Net specific copy of Agent recently: turn on the
>X-No-Archive flag. This is, oddly enough, under the Menu for Group,
>either Properties (for individual ngs) or Default Properties (to pick
>them all up). The Tab is Post, click the box labeled "Prevent usenet
>messages from being archived (X-No-Archive)".
>
>I like having Deja News for Usenet, but I dislike it for semi-private
>groups like SFF-Net. I think it gets back to the "feel" of this
>place.
Jim Bailey
Richard R. Horton wrote:
>
> rgil...@netnet.net (Richard Gilliam) wrote:
>
> >I was dismayed to discover that posts that I have made here and only
> >here are being archived in Deja News.
>
> I was annoyed to find this out too, and we discussed this somewhere
> around here a few months ago. You do have an option, one which I
> exercised on my SFF-Net specific copy of Agent recently: turn on the
> X-No-Archive flag. This is, oddly enough, under the Menu for Group,
> either Properties (for individual ngs) or Default Properties (to pick
> them all up). The Tab is Post, click the box labeled "Prevent usenet
> messages from being archived (X-No-Archive)".
Oh, that's right, forgot about that. And if the newsreader you have
doesn't have that option, then you can accomplish the same thing by
having "x-no-archive: yes" as the first line in the post.
Jade, I don't suppose there's a way to do this server side to all the
posts, at least make sff-net stealth to the main archive servers? You
could I suppose add this feature to WebNews posts as either a matter of
course, or as an option.
> I like having Deja News for Usenet, but I dislike it for semi-private
> groups like SFF-Net. I think it gets back to the "feel" of this
> place.
Yeah, I agree. It's far different to be public to the set of readers
who would come here on purpose.
Best,
Jim Bailey
Doranna
Hmmm...I couldn't find that option in my Free Agent. Were you
specifically referring to Agent, or do I need to update my Free Agent?
--Doranna
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 14:13:25 GMT, richard....@boeing.com (Richard
R. Horton) wrote:
>rgil...@netnet.net (Richard Gilliam) wrote:
>I was annoyed to find this out too, and we discussed this somewhere
>around here a few months ago. You do have an option, one which I
>exercised on my SFF-Net specific copy of Agent recently: turn on the
>X-No-Archive flag. This is, oddly enough, under the Menu for Group,
>either Properties (for individual ngs) or Default Properties (to pick
>them all up). The Tab is Post, click the box labeled "Prevent usenet
>messages from being archived (X-No-Archive)".
Doranna Durgin
Doranna
Thanks. That's just the sort of weighing in that I meant. Sorry I
didn't catch this conversation the first time around!
--Doranna
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 03:53:01 GMT, TechS...@SFF.Net (Jeffry Dwight)
wrote:
>dor...@sff.net (Doranna) wrote:
>
>>I just made this discovery myself, within the week, and was going to
>>post something very much like this. I'm not very happy to find SFF
>>net posts there, but I don't know what can be done. I'm waiting for
>>Yog or Jade to weigh in...
>
>I didn't think there was much to add. People seem to discover this every two
>or three months. DejaNews is not the only place to carry a selection of SFF
>Net's public groups. Several regular ISPs also mirror some newsgroups.
>
>SFF Net is not happy about this practice, but we are still consulting with our
>legal counsel about the wheretos, whyfores, and whatnots associated with the
>whole issue.
>
>In general, the SFF Net public newsgroups are public, and you should think of
>them that way when you post. Any non-member can waltz in here at any time and
>read the public areas. If the non-member happens to be an ISP's server, who
>then reposts or mirrors the messages, there isn't much we can do to limit that
>short of a restraining order or lawsuit. We are not eager to pursue those
>options, especially since (a) we want goodwill, and (b) the laws are not
>unambiguous.
>
>Our intention was --and is-- that SFF Net newsgroups not be propagated
>elsewhere. We have not reached a happy solution that ensures it.
>
>- j.
Modean Moon
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 20:30:12 GMT, dor...@sff.net (Doranna) wrote:
>Hmmm...I couldn't find that option in my Free Agent. Were you
>specifically referring to Agent, or do I need to update my Free Agent?
>
Doranna --
It isn't in my version of Agent either (99e/16). Also, there are some
problems with using the X no archive feature. If I were to use it, but
someone quoting my post did not, then the follow up post, and
therefore any of mine quoted, would be subject to archive.
Modean
Alan Rodgers
Jeffry Dwight wrote:
> >> Our intention was --and is-- that SFF Net newsgroups not be propagated
> >> elsewhere. We have not reached a happy solution that ensures it.
> >Uh...I suppose of course you've tried simply asking DejaNews or
> >those other ISPs not to?
> I won't go into specifics here in public, but yes, we have tried that
> approach. We've received every answer from cheerful compliance to outright
> refusal, with a couple of yeah-yeah-sures that were really brush-offs.
Might help to most the email addresses of the offending new admins. If
I found a post of mine from here elsewhere, I'd be real upset with the
news admin. I own th ecopyright to that, and I don't want it on his
foraging server. At all.
The copyright laws are a lot clearer on this than they are on sff net's
ability to restrict it.
Eden -Mouse- Dorn
In article <35983D...@sff.net>, claguire <cam...@sff.net> wrote:
>Richard Gilliam wrote:
>>
>> I was dismayed to discover that posts that I have made here and only
>
>I went to DejaNews and searched and searched, and I couldn't find any
>posts of mine. Perhaps someone has been forwarding your posts,
>unbeknownst to you?
I haven't checked yet, but...
>I would think, since sff.net doesn't provide a "newsfeed" to other
>servers, that Deja News would have a harder time justifying the
>distribution of hte files.
I do know of at least one Usenet place in Russia that actually forwards
two of the sff.net newsgroups. I'll check with a newsadmin I know (who
found them for me before I decided it was easier to just ditch my ISP's
newsfeed for news:sff.net...
-Eden "Mouse"
--
http://www.wizvax.net/mouse http://www.sff.net/people/Mouse
sff.people.mouse ICQ# 12573330
Richard Gilliam
This is an awful lot of hoops to jump through every time a post is
made just to avoid having Deja News pirate it. There are some sff.net
heirarchies that Deja News doesn't copy, so it also might be possible
to disguise groups like sff.movies as sff.people.movies, except that
Deja News probably robosearches for the substring "movies" so you'd
have to misspell "movies" somehow, maybe as "moovies."
It may well be that individual users (acting as a class action) have
better standing than sff.net to seek recourse against Deja News, or
perhaps that one of the writers organizations who is active here could
seek recourse on behalf of its members.
Richard
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 20:57:22 GMT, richard....@boeing.com (Richard
R. Horton) wrote:
>dor...@sff.net (Doranna) wrote:
>
>>Hmmm...I couldn't find that option in my Free Agent. Were you
>>specifically referring to Agent, or do I need to update my Free Agent?
>
>I was referring specifically to Agent (which is the newsread Richard
>Gilliam (and Richard Horton <g>) uses). I'm not sure if it's in Free
>Agent or not. I suspect that adding "X-No-Archive: yes" as the first
>line of your posts would still work (though it would be a pain, and
>hard to remember. I have a feeling that it wouldn't work in a .sig,
>though I'm talking through my hat: best to ask an expert.)
Tippi N. Blevins
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 14:13:25 GMT, richard....@boeing.com (Richard
R. Horton) wrote:
>rgil...@netnet.net (Richard Gilliam) wrote:
>
>>I was dismayed to discover that posts that I have made here and only
>>here are being archived in Deja News.
>
>I was annoyed to find this out too, and we discussed this somewhere
>around here a few months ago. You do have an option, one which I
>exercised on my SFF-Net specific copy of Agent recently: turn on the
>X-No-Archive flag. This is, oddly enough, under the Menu for Group,
>either Properties (for individual ngs) or Default Properties (to pick
>them all up). The Tab is Post, click the box labeled "Prevent usenet
>messages from being archived (X-No-Archive)".
>
>I like having Deja News for Usenet, but I dislike it for semi-private
>groups like SFF-Net. I think it gets back to the "feel" of this
>place.
This option's not on Free Agent, is it?
Tippi
--
Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is
always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit
down quietly, may alight upon you. -Nathaniel Hawthorne