Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!mcdchg!chinet!patrick
From: patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Changes to the monthly postings (for rec.humor.funny)
Message-ID: <7633@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 4 Feb 89 22:59:55 GMT
References: <2706@looking.UUCP> <2844@epimass.EPI.COM> <2714@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 131

In article <2714@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>Recently I have been put through a great deal of personal stress,
>considerable cost in telephone and legal expenses, ill health and
>literally weeks of lost time because of my dedication to rec.humor.funny.
>All this on top of the considerable time I put into moderating the
>group. 

You are to be commended for your hard and diligent work with the rec.humor.
funny group. Although I've had no ill health or legal expenses as a result
of my work with comp.dcom.telecom/[Telecom Digest], I've certainly had
my share of telephone bills and nights with little sleep. I work a full
time job and have a part time job three hours per night three nights per
week which pays for my hobby. Since like your group, I publish the Digest
at least once daily and usually twice considering the volume of mail, I
usually get home at 10:30 PM, grab a bite to eat, and spend the next three
hours on line to Boston. Then I get up at 7:30 in the morning and start
all over again. Anyone who says a moderator has a glamorous job is full
of beans.

>All this because I have worked hard to give you folks, for free, something
>you tell me you enjoy a lot.

But more important, do YOU enjoy it a lot? If it has become a hardship, or
something that causes you a lot of personal grief, then you should cease
participating in it. The day I grow tired of comp.dcom.telecom will be the
day I wave bye-bye, and the day [Telecom Digest] bites the dust and goes in
the bit bucket. 

>Believe me, it's not pleasant to be called a racist on the front page of
>major newspapers, and to become the enemy of the president of your alma
>mater.

I'm sure it isn't, but it was YOU who made the concious decision that
rec.humor.funny would include the type of humor which many people find
obnoxious. YOU set the pace there. You may couch it in terms of freedom
of speech or whatever you like; you may be quite right. But YOU chose how
to moderate the group; just as I choose how to moderate comp.dcom.telecom.
Some people have dropped from the mailing list since I took over from jsol,
and others have eagerly joined. I make the decisions there, and you have
made yours.

>So I decided to affirm that the group is mine, and that I control it....

But it isn't really yours, any more than comp.dcom.telecom is mine. I view
Moderators more as persons placed in a position of trust to manage some
portion of the net resources. If the group is your personal property, then
why don't you start paying the cost of transmitting *your property* all 
over the net? You are dependent upon the good will of the backbones and
other major sites to transmit your material freely. They in turn are
dependent upon your good will in producing a polished well prepared group
every day. It is not a one-sided thing here: Lots of people cooperate by
giving their best to Usenet.

>So I have affirmed my compilation
>copyright(*) in the group, and said all free usenet sites can carry it, and
>that other sites have to ask.  I have also said that just about anybody
>who asks will get a yes.  But it is *my* decision.

Well again, what would be your reaction if one of the major backbone sites
took the same attitude about its work?

   1. Our machine is spending hours each day receiving/passing news.
   2. We are spending much time, money and effort to do what is
      apparently pleasing to a large number of people.
   3. Therefore *from now on, we control it; it belongs to us*.
   4. We hold a compilation copyright, and people will start asking us
      for permission to disseminate the groups.

Now would YOU like that? What if someone decides that based on their work
with the overall Usenet, that THEY are going to enforce a compilation
copyright on the whole thing every day? After all, the backbone in a sense
does 'compile' all the news groups and pass them along.

>I don't really know what Portal is, but if
>I decide they're making money off what I do, then I have the right to
>control it.

That's really rich. Portal is first and foremost a chat system with 
local news groups. They charge $10 per month for unlimited usage. The
users hang on line for hours at a time; all for $10 per month. Usenet
access is a small part of what they offer, and your group would be
1/300th of that, if the last count of available groups is correct. With
all due respect to John Little and Phil Sih, sysadmins for that site,
they are all a bunch of pissants. (BTW, that is pronounced peh-santz,
not piss ants.) What a novel concept! Getting rich from Portal royalties.

>But I will have control over what I do, and *I* will get to decide if
>somebody else can make money off of my work.

And I repeat, if you wish total control, then you should be paying for
the transmission time and the disk space on all the machines you occupy.

>If you're right in saying
>that the net will laugh in my face for doing this, then I will leave.

No one is, or at least no one should be laughing at the work of any
moderator or other person involved with the daily mirror of life known as
Usenet. I do what I do here because (a) I enjoy it, and (b) it is a way
to pay for the many benefits I've received from being part of the Usenet
community for awhile now. 

What I wish you would realize is that there are lots of people in this
together, in a cooperative effort to educate, entertain and inform the
user community. Because of the unique nature of Usenet and Fidonet, the
type of control you are asking for is a slap in the face to a huge group
of other people. To have the type of control you desire, you should remove
rec.humor.funny entirely and locate it on Compuserve or a similar service
where the Moderator does indeed have a commercial and contractual 
arrangement with the operators of the network. And based on your strong
feelings in this matter, I'd not think you were wrong in moving to a 
commercial system, although I'd certainly miss reading the group each day.


>All moderators have a compilation copyright on their moderated groups,
>unless they explictly renounce it.  They have to declare it to enforce it,
>however.

Yeah, but what if EVERYONE who labored a couple hours each day on Usenet and 
got a $325 bill from the phone company last month decided to enforce it?

Patrick Townson
TELECOM Digest Moderator

Patrick Townson 
  patrick@chinet.chi.il.us / US Mail: 60690-1570 (personal zip code)
  FIDO: 115/743 / AT&T Mail: 529-6378 (!ptownson) /  MCI Mail: 222-4956

-- 
Patrick Townson 
  patrick@chinet.chi.il.us / US Mail: 60690-1570 (personal zip code)
  FIDO: 115/743 / AT&T Mail: 529-6378 (!ptownson) /  MCI Mail: 222-4956