Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!vsi1!octopus!avsd!childers
From: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: UUCP Maps Used For Commerce
Message-ID: <2048@avsd.UUCP>
Date: 14 Sep 89 21:14:02 GMT
Reply-To: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers)
Organization: Metaprogrammers International
Lines: 90


Well, it's finally happened, thanks to all the amoral money-grubbers and
wannabees who are just out for a fast buck or are too lazy to gather their
own mailing lists. I've received mail that clearly contains information
which was derived from my site's map entry. Among other things ...

	o it includes my full 9-digit zip code, which was in the map entry ;

	o it includes the names of all divisions I support, which would
	  only come from the map entry ( Record / Video Systems Divisions ) ;

	o and the form letter addresses me as "Dear Northern California
	  UUCP site contact", I kid you not. ( These people have never
	  heard of computer addressing ? )

And, goddamn it, at the bottom, it mentions ClariNet and IN MODERATION.

				-=*=-

And it was only two weeks ago that _someone_ was broadcasting their total
lack of intentions to utilize the Usenet as a commercial entity, and was
it only a few days ago that they were trying to downplay democracy as a
way of making decisions for groups of people.

So whom was this charming document from ? I'll be damned if I'll type in
their pap, but I'll be glad to offer up names and numbers.

		Anterior Technology	( should've been 'Posterior' )
		POB 1206
		Menlo Park, CA 94026-1206
		(415) 328-5615

( Somehow, I'm not surprised that they're operating from behind a POB. )

It was signed by Geoff Goodfellow, now there's a good fellow.	(-:

He's invited me to attend their booth at INTEROP '89. If I do, it'll only be
to ball them out in public at the top of my voice. Or maybe I'll give it to
the most troublesome adolescent I can find. My mind boggles at the possible
uses of this pass.

				-=*=-

Some particularly offensive pap :

	"The IN MODERATION Network is an evolving new hierarchy of USENET
	 netnews groups and Internet mailing lists. Our charter is to provide
	 the on-line community with useful, instructive, entertaining infor-
	 -mation which satisfies commonly accepted standards of good taste
	 and principled discourse."

Evolving ? It's an entity, now, is it, responding to its environment, no
people behind it making profit at all, nosirree bob ...

USENET ? Isn't that in the public domain ? Is it really appropriate for a
private company to associate itself with a public-domain consortium, albeit
a totally unstructured and chaotic one, when it hasn't the slightest intent
of conforming to the value system that brought these diverse participants
together, lo, many years ago, in the interest of Freedom of Information,
shared resources, and peerhood ?

That they are getting this from the USENET and Internet and reselling it,
without paying those from whom it acquired this material, is parasitic.
Just because the USENET has no legal status is no reason to sell it to the
highest bidders. Ethics preceed laws, and laws only approximate ethics.
In this case, an absence of laws has only highlighted an absence of ethics.

Charter ? And from whom did you derive this charter ? The USENET ? Or the
boardroom full of chuckling, grinning sharks, each avoiding the eyes of the
other as they anticipated the flow of money and minimal outlay ? Bah, ptui.

Useful, instructive, entertaining ... yet, conforming to commonly accepted
standards of good taste and principled discourse. Whose principles ? Those
who arranged this whole fiasco, smoothly covering up their intentions with
oiled words and vague statements ? Great. I'm kind of curious as to where
this 'commonly accepted' set of standards was derived from, given the outcry
that resulted when certain parties first broached the possibility of using
the map database as a commercial resource without doing the commercial thing,
first, which is to pay for it.

Well, people, time to put a (copyright 1989 your_name_here) in your .signature
and prepare for a lot of lawsuits. I am disgusted.

-- richard

-- 
 *                                                                            *
 *          Intelligence : the ability to create order out of chaos.          *
 *                                                                            *
 *      ..{amdahl|decwrl|octopus|pyramid|ucbvax}!avsd.UUCP!childers@tycho     *