Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!rob
From: rob@violet.berkeley.edu (Rob Robertson)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Introduction to REC.HUMOR.FUNNY -- Monthly Posting
Keywords: Copyright, Plagerism
Message-ID: <19979@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 6 Feb 89 06:21:05 GMT
References: <2712@looking.UUCP> <1449@papaya.bbn.com> <166@deltam.UUCP> <488@utoday.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <488@utoday.UUCP> greenber@.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes:
>Frankly, I think Bard is doing the right thing:  he does spend some time
>on r.h.f, and it would be a pity if somebody else made money off of it
>instead of Brad.  I would think that the ethical thing to do, were Brad
>to make some $$$ on r.h.f would be to redistribute that income, in part, to
>the individual contributors to r.h.f.
>
>But, it's pretty silly that, the moment Brad voices the rights he already
>has, people start hollering for his removal.
>
>Brad, just as a guesstimate, how much time do you put into r.h.f??

Ross,

There are alot of people involved in the running of usenet, all of
them do it for free, the people that write the software, the site
admins, moderators, map coordinators, and posters.  Brad may be
putting alot of time into r.h.f, but so are alot of other people.
they are going it on a volunteer basis, just as Brad volunteered to be
moderator of r.h.f.

Usenet is pretty much non-commercial, that's the beauty of it and one
of the reasons alot of companies and networks subsidize the transport
of it.  Were Usent to become a "commercial network", many sites/networks
would probably consider dropping it.

I suspect that no one would object to a copyright that prohibited
making money off of r.h.f (a la GNU) and protected Brad from
'retribution'.  What people are objecting to is the possibility that
Brad may use a medium (Usenet) that THEY are providing (via connect /
disk costs) to make money.  

Please note that I am responding to Ross's points, not insinuating
that Brad is going to try to use r.h.f to make millions.

rob
				william robertson
				rob@violet.berkeley.edu