Xref: utzoo rec.humor.d:1573 news.admin:4721
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!julian!uwovax!gerard
From: gerard@uwovax.uwo.ca (Gerard Stafleu)
Newsgroups: rec.humor.d,news.admin
Subject: Re: Introduction to REC.HUMOR.FUNNY -- Monthly Posting
Message-ID: <1565@uwovax.uwo.ca>
Date: 8 Feb 89 09:42:44 GMT
References: <2712@looking.UUCP> <1449@papaya.bbn.com> <166@deltam.UUCP> <14363@cup.portal.com> <3400@sugar.uu.net>
Lines: 54
Organisation: University of Western Ontario, Canada

In article <3400@sugar.uu.net>, karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer) writes:
> Brad seems to be asserting a copyright for two different reasons.  One is
> to protect himself (?) from attack as the moderator of rec.humor.funny.
> The other appears to be to stake out a percentage of profits being derived
> by others through the resale of r.h.f.

Stake out a percentage? When did he ever say that?  He has made it clear 
from the beginning that he is after a way to avoid a repeat of the 
recent spat.  Differentiating between for-profit and not-for-profit 
organizations tallies very well with this: usually your liablity is 
greater when you get paid than when you do not get paid.

Brad's desire for some protection against the type of unfair attack that 
we have recently seen is quite legitimate.  And let us not forget that 
he is not trying to protect himself (and possibly others in a similar 
position) against anything from within the net.  If everything had 
stayed within the net, there would have been no problem.  The opinion of 
the net went in great majority against Mr. Richmont, and that should 
have been the end of it.  The problems arose when Mr. Richmont went 
outside the net, to newspapers, employers etc.  So please net.people, do 
not feel personally attacked.  Protective measures are not aimed against 
you, but against "the outside".

The desire for protection against this outside interference is fair, and 
solutions should be seriously considered.  Perhaps Brad has gone a bit 
far in his proposed solution.  If so, this should be reasonably 
discussed, and the net should come up with viable, constructive counter 
proposals.  I do not think that asking for Brads removal as moderator 
falls under that catagory.  Neither does saying "if you can't stand the 
heat,...".

I will now state my (counter) proposal for protective measures.  It does 
two things with respect to Brad's proposal: 1) Do it without copyright, 
as that seems to be very controversial, and 2) do it via the sysadmins.

There are some newsgroups that every sysadmin is expected to read all 
the time (news.announce.important, news.sysadmin).  To these groups a 
notice could be posted regularly (monthly?), stating that the 
responsibility for passing on any newsgroup to their direct end users 
(and NOT to downstream nodes), rest with the sysadmin of the node.  No 
one else is responsible for anything in a news group, except the 
_original_ author of a posting (and NOT the moderator, if the article 
is in a moderated group).

This proposal gives moderators some protection against outside attacks.
It avoids complications with down stream liablity, as responsibility is
located in the local sysadmin and the original author only.  

The protection is probably less than with Brad's copyright scheme
(because the copyright scheme uses concepts from the outside, so you are
meeting them on their own terms). But then the price for that larger
protection might be too high.  I suggest we try something like the
scheme I described, and go only to more rigorous methods if the scheme
proves not to work.