Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!chinet!patrick
From: patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Protection Against Abuse of Messages
Message-ID: <7687@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 11 Feb 89 17:05:21 GMT
References: <2726@looking.UUCP> <7651@chinet.chi.il.us> <1989Feb10.210824.1579@sq.uucp>
Reply-To: patrick@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick A. Townson)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 70

In article <1989Feb10.210824.1579@sq.uucp> msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) writes:
>
>> And networks like Compuserve, Western Union's FYI, Source, and others
>> which get their $5-7 per hour from users reading data bases -- have for
>> some time been hostile toward Fidonet and Usenet for 'stealing' users
>> from them; people who have wised up to the fact that you don't have to
>> spend $6 an hour to have a good time with your terminal and modem.
>
>I don't really understand why Usenet people would object to something
>being carried on, say, Compuserve, just because someone other than makes
>money from it.  The point of posting something to the net is to achieve
>wide distribution for it.  I say, the more distribution the better,
>provided of course that that distribution is an appropriate one for
>the individual message.

If we all made money from it, fine. If some of us made money because of
good business judgment in the matter, while others of us lost money because
of poor business judgment, then fine also. If we intended to make money from
Usenet and we all lost money because of our business decisions, then again,
that's fine with me.

But the point is, Usenet participants, ranging from moderators of groups
to system administrators to Universities which supply phone lines and
computers HAD NO INTENTION OF MAKING MONEY (or losing it, for that matter).
The idea was that Usenet was to be a cooperative exchange of messages in
a spirit of goodwill between various computer sites. I give my time to
moderate a group with the understanding that Boston University will give
the resources I need to compile/originate it each day. We both give these
things with the understanding that people at Harvard, Purdue, Company X,
and Site Z will not only make it available at no cost to their users but
will in many instances pass it along to other sites without sending me a
phone bill with a demand for payment in the process.

I don't get paid for moderating; Boston U does not get compensated for the
computer resources, and Randy Suess at Chinet does not get paid for the
dozen phone lines he has installed at his site. 

Now in the example cited, here comes Compuserve; willing to take all it
can get for free and re-sell the cooperative efforts of others for $6 per
hour. There is something to be said about the importance of distributing
information; yes, we do want our messages to be widely disseminated, and
our information FREELY available to others.

We overlook/ignore modest user fees of the $10 per month Portal type or
the $50 per year (frequently written off) Chinet type. In the case of
Chinet, the $50 covers Randy's own out-of-pocket expenses on phone lines,
etc, and not much more. But I do not think we can afford to overlook the
commercial resale of our cooperative, goodwill efforts on Usenet. I do
not think we can overlook the fact that Compuserve also compile-copyrights
the entire load every day. Just try downloading huge amounts of data from
Compuserve and displaying it elsewhere! 

Ask them sometime: would CIS make an exception for Usenet, if they took it
for themselves? Would they exclude it from their copyright claims and permit
it to be re-displayed elsewhere? I doubt it. If anything, I fully suspect
that if CIS did start taking Usenet stuff, it would only be a matter of 
time until *their attornies* started making threatening noises at us, and
making all sorts of condescending remarks. 

I'd have to say stay clear of feeding commercial networks unless and until
we, meaning the Usenet community, have full control of the output, and the
terms are to our liking. *Their* reward is in the money they hustle from
their bozo users. *Our* reward is in seeing the results of our collective
efforts each day. Unless we write the terms, then there should be no terms.


-- 
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