Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ateng!chip From: chip@ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: In Moderation Message-ID: <24AF7C38.8967@ateng.com> Date: 3 Jul 89 14:46:14 GMT References: <24A91A67.28396@ateng.com> <3300@epimass.EPI.COM> <197600001@inmet> <14403@bfmny0.UUCP> <3749@viscous.sco.COM> <29-Jun-89.175917@192.41.214.248> Organization: A T Engineering, Tampa, FL Lines: 30 According to kdb@InterCon.uu.net (Kurt Baumann): >As much as I hate to get involved in this... They are not making money from >your or anyone elses articles. They are making money from sorting through >the articles and then sending those that they found to have some content >on to their subscribers. Strickly speaking they do not make money off of >your articles, but rather from the screening service. Well, before the theoretical customer receives his theoretical daily IMN feed, he doesn't have my theoretical high-quality article. As a part of his feed, he receives my article. IMN wants money, or else their customer doesn't get his feed. As far as I'm concerned, IMN is making a profit from forwarding my article, and is then attempting to limit redistribution of my article by their customers. The profit isn't so bad (compare uunet and portal), but the redistribution restrictions are a basic alteration of the character of Usenet. The act of posting on Usenet grants redistribution rights to recipients. But it does not grant permission to include in anthologies or other collective works, especially if they are sold without giving due compensation to the author! Of course, IMN could send cancel messages to kill "noise." That would get around the copyright issue. But that would leave them in an even weaker position as to limiting redistribution than the partial feed method would. All their customers could easily claim that since they already had my article, IMN can't restrict them from redistributing it; thus IMN loses subscribers and eventually disappears. (I hope.) -- You may redistribute this article only to those who may freely do likewise. Chip Salzenberg | or A T Engineering | Me? Speak for my company? Surely you jest!