Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Some questions about USENET and commercial sites
Message-ID: <2958@looking.UUCP>
Date: 16 Mar 89 17:48:09 GMT
References: <7105@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 55

In article <7105@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> vnend@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (D. W. James) writes:
>Some questions:
>
>1) The internet has a certain prohibition against commercial use of the
>   network.  Would traffic in rec.humor.funny, some of which was both 
>   coming from and going to a purely pay-by-the-minute-reading site
>   (Compuserve, GEnie, etc.) constitute commercial use of the network?

I don't see why not, so long as the material going over usenet is not
charged for.  Portal is for pay.  Uunet is for pay, non profit.  If
material of commercial origin can't go over the internet then all the shareware
must be deleted from all FTP archives, such as Simtel-20.
>
>2) I've seen one person claiming that Brad built rec.humor.funny
>   practically with his bare hands.  I've seen someone else saying 
>   that he was elected.  Which was it?

Both are true.  I built it with my bare hands.  Part of that included
conducting a vote.  The vote was 64 to 1, and this was back in the early
days of group voting, so that '100' rule you hear about was flexible.  I
asked to have it flexed.  It was.  People agreed, afterwards.  (Current
readership estimate 57,000, making RHF not only the net's most popular
electronic forum, but possibly the entire Earth's (anybody know about France?))

>3) With regards to the commercial systems having access to USENET in general,
>   don't they claim some copyright to their stuff?  If so, will they be
>   claiming some kind of copyright of the USENET traffic?  And, once again,
>   how does their charging affect the internet?

They can claim a copyright on their combination of the traffic they get
and their own material.  This doesn't mean the usenet traffic on its own
isn't still freely distributable.  They simply have the choice about what
comes from their own machine.  All net sites have this power.
>***************  (Switch to different user)
>
>	The question of whether Brad is/was intending to use the
>compilation copyright for this purpose all along is yet another,
>but I really don't see how we can answer it.

You can answer it easily.  I wrote extensively on the subject last
month during that debate.  I was quite explicit about the relationship
between compilation copyright and feeds to commercial sites, and stated
my approval of such links, so long as they were under my control.  I
did not name any names, of course.  Even now, I still haven't finalized
any deals with these folks.

As for the whole question, Genie is no different from Portal or the Well.
The difference is just one of degree.  Genie charges more.  I say leave it
up to the customers to decide which timesharing service gives the best
value -- it's not for us to judge the price.  There is no question in
my mind that if Genie has to go, then Portal, Well and all fee-charging
sites have to go, unless they are explicitly non-profit as UUNET is.
This would be a mistake.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473