Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!evan
From: evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: ukc breaking its own rules?
Message-ID: <257A85B0.6E59@telly.on.ca>
Date: 4 Dec 89 14:56:46 GMT
Organization: Public Access Usenet, Brampton, Ontario
Lines: 53

The UK maps as posted in comp.mail.maps contain:

>#	Copyright 1989 by EUUG. All rights reserved.
>#	Permission to redistribute and use for routing purposes granted.

Fine. But how does this jive with a letter I received recently? The
letter was addressed to:

Evan Leibovitch
System Telly
[address]

The ONLY place I am identified this way is in the UUCP maps!

The contents? An advertisement for "The Miranda Functional Programming
System", from a commercial venture called Research Software Ltd. in the UK.

So which site supplied the Usenet mailing list for commercial purpose?

Hmm. There's an e-mail address given: mira-request@ukc.ac.uk - the
University of Kent, the UK Usenet gateway! Inside the ad we are
introduced to the inventor of Miranda, Kent Professor David Turner.

So we have the University of Kent either engaging in commercial
activities itself, or allowing its facilities to be used for commercial
purposes.

I infer from this, but cannot state categorically, that Kent was the
source of the Usenet maps used for the mailing. If true, this is quite
surprising, since Kent maintains the UK maps and is probably responsible
for their copyright message.

Does this blatantly commercial act contravene the copyright on the UK
maps that Kent itself maintains? If the map data was taken without Kent's
consent, how will the university discipline one of its own professors?

While I am not bothered by the mailing itself, I hope this points out
the hypocricy of Kent's practice of segregating commercial sites (*.co.uk)
from academic ones (*.ac.uk). Further, I am told by more than one source
that it costs far less for an academic site to access Usenet in the UK
than a commercial one.

In light of the obvious overlap, that indeed commercial organizations
engage in research and academic institutions sometimes engage in (or
endorse) commercial ventures, is the segregation not unfair?

Even the Miranda prices are four times higher for educational use than
commercial. Another example of a product priced on the intended use, not
the cost of making it.
-- 
  Evan Leibovitch, Telly Computing, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
          evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evan / (416)452-0504
 "The Honorable Member disagrees. I can hear him shaking his head" - P.E.T.