Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!motsj1!mcdchg!ddsw1!corpane!sparks
From: sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: In Moderation - Good or Bad?
Message-ID: <805@corpane.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jun 89 20:06:03 GMT
References: <1989Jun12.100943.24233@ateng.ateng.com>
Reply-To: sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks)
Organization: Corpane Industries, Inc.
Lines: 65

In article <1989Jun12.100943.24233@ateng.ateng.com> chip@ateng.ateng.com (Chip
Salzenberg) writes:
>Obviously, reasonable people can and do disagree on the subject of the
>interaction between commercial operations and Usenet.  I see it thus:
>
>    Usenet cooexists with, and sometimes even supports, commercial
>    operations; in turn, commercial operations support Usenet.
>    Such cooperation is at the heart of the Usenet spirit as
>    I understand it.
>
>    However, the Usenet's cooperative is based upon the distribution of
>        information without restriction other than author copyright.


So IMN is bad because it is a limited newsfeed?

Now, what if there was a mythical company called Gateway. Now gateway gets a
full news feed. Gateway is the only node in Arizona. Gateway pays long distance
charges to get its newsfeed.

Now let's say that some other companies in Arizona want to get a newsfeed. They
can't afford the long distance phone costs and so want to feed off of Gateway.
Gateway says, "Ok but I will charge you $XXX to feed you usenet."

Now is there anything wrong with this? Assuming that Gateway doesn't restrict
the further feeding of news. What if Gateway was making money on this deal
because all the companies in Alaska decided to pay Gateway, rather than One
feeding off Gateway and the others off of him?

I think it's ok. Making money selling newsfeeds is not wrong. You can always
get a feed from somewhere else. No one is forcing you to get it from a
'gateway'.

UUNET sells feeds. They claim to be non-profit but all that means is that they
put all the money back into the company. The people who run uunet still make
salaries. Now what does a for-profit business do that a non-profit business
doesn't do? The 'profit' is usually put back into the business to expand it
just like a non-profit company. Some of it goes to pay stockholder dividends
but most stays in the company. So in my opinion uunet is making money off of
usenet. Now sure, they are performing a service in return by being a hub for
news, but so is Gateway in my example above.



Now, I don't like the idea of someone culling usenet and selling a restricted
version of it and maybe trying to restrict the further passage of news to other
sites. To me that is paramount to plagarism. Taking the work of others and
claiming copyright  of it to restrict it from others. 

If IMN does not try to compilation copyright the stuff it takes from Usenet and
doesn't try to restrict their customers from passing it on, then I don't have
any objections to them.

What *IS* their policy regarding this?

In summary: I think that a site has the right to sell ACCESS to news but not to
try to OWN news and/or restrict it after it leaves the site.




-- 
John Sparks   |  {rutgers|uunet}!ukma!corpane!sparks | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 1200bps
|||||||||||||||          sparks@corpane.UUCP         | 502/968-5401 thru -5406 
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.