NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/comp/org/eff/talk/4890

Text File | 1992-07-27 | 15.4 KB | 345 lines

Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!sifon!news
From: [e-mail] (Peter Deutsch)
Subject: Re: Copyrights on netnews articles
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Nntp-Posting-Host: expresso.cc.mcgill.ca
Organization: Bunyip Information Systems (the archie people)
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 01:43:43 GMT
Lines: 332

In article <[e-mail]>
[e-mail] (Mike Meyer) writes:
> In <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Peter Deutsch) wrote:

[* I'm trying to trim without loosing context here. Bear with me *]

> > >> .  .  .The reason this debate wont die is
> > >> that there are two possible interpretations of what else
> > >> is allowed. Some are claiming that granting such
> > >> permission renounces all other rights, and some (count me
> > >> in this camp) are arguing that I can grant a limited right
> > >> in this context without renouncing my rights to a future
> > >> mini-series deal.
> > >
> > >Actually, I'm in neither camp, because I don't agree with either
> > >interpretation. I agree that you don't give up all rights by
posting
> > >an article. However, "automated, distributed bulletin board
services"
> > >doesn't begin to cover the real things that are being done with
> > >USENET.
  .  .
> > The way I read this, you are firmly in the second camp,
>
> Nope. "Giving up all rights" means that people can legally copy your
> articles into magazines and newspapers, copy them to BBS'es other
than
> USENET, and so on. I don't believe that any of those uses are legit.


Then I didn't express myself very well. That's what I meant when I said
"I can grant a limited right in this context without renouncing my
rights to a future mini-series deal." I still think we're agreeing
here.


> > but disagree with the preamble. And I will stand by my
> > handwaving definition of Usenet, since it is definitely
> > automated, definitely distributed and definitely a
> > bulletin board service.
>
> So what are those people who read USENET from the other side of an
> e-mail gateway doing? They clearly aren't reading a bulletin board
> system. .  .

Err, now it seems you and I must have a different meaning for the
word "bulletin board" since the existance of an email gateway doesn't
change the public access, interactive nature of the service.
Even piping news into your mailer seems like it preserves the
fundamental nature of the service and simply allows you to share
reader technology with your email.


> .  .   Do you therefore maintain that they are violating copyrights?

No, because I don't see how the email gateway cancels the
"Usenetedness" of the service. If I post with the understanding
that I am allowing my words to be distributed in an interactive,
subject oriented bullentin-board like service, with no financial gain
from my work accruing to its _users_ then someone reading my postings
on UUnet, std.world.com, etc are not in violation, but someone
gathering up the "collected blatering sof peterd" and selling paper
copies of them is (to me, fairly clearly) out of line.

> Or maybe the people who set up the gateway (and, in many cases,
> created the newsgroup to gateway the mail to) are doing so?  What
> about the people who have some netnews articles fed to their beepers?
> (I'm not sure this is actually happening, only because I don't know
if
> the people doing it are reading USENET, or are limiting themselves to
> licensed newsgroups).

Gosh, this is getting painful, but everyone else has had a go
so I'll have a go, too.


"Ahem - How I define Usenet, by peterd"

To me, Usenet is defined in terms of a set of attributes. It is
a bulletin-board service, meaning that there is two way, public
interaction among many participants. This distinguishes it from
email, which is a one on one service, and such services as
Campus-Wide Information Services, which are "one to many" services.
This does _not_ disallow using a mail reader to read Usenet, since
it is trivially easy to set it up to reply to the appropriate newsgroup
via mail, if you wish to participate in a thread.

There is grouping of postings by subject matter. There is a (to me)
implicit assumption that I will allow (or am instructing) the systems
participating in the USenet distribution network to make copies of my
postings for transmittal within the scope of Usenet. (Value judgement
alert!) I will willingly conceed that preparing a CD-ROM of all Usenet
postings, without prior filtering on content, is probably within the
scope of Usenet, although filtering, editorial selection and
retransmittal to other media, including (but not limited to) print,
broadcast video, etc. is not.

To me, there is also an implicit assumption that your article will
expire and go away after a predetermined amount of time. Yes, some
sites are now offering archives of Usenet postings, but this is
neither as wide-spread nor as complete as some people seem to be
arguing. I would interpret this to be that such archiving is an
adjunct to Usenet, not an essential component of Usenet.

So, what does it all mean? It means that if I am right, I can post my
most intimate thoughts to Usenet and not expect to seem them turning
up in the pages of SunExpert without credit or acknowledgement. I still
own them, and I've agreed to share them with people for a limited
time without charging a fee. The way I see it, it's like a playwright
who allows one of his or her plays to be performed at a summer
theatre festival for a limited run (Oh, Gawd, I hear you
cry - another simile!).

Doing this allows one's work to be seen by all, at no charge, but that
doesn't mean that the playwright renounces all right to the work. It
has merely been licenced for a limited run, at perhaps no fixed
charge to the user. Happens all the time.

> > rather for access to the _service_ of Usenet. Once we
> > start charging for Mike Meyer's work, or take the posting
> > into another medium, we have clearly crossed some
> > boundary. I think the distinction, while subtle, is at the
> > heart of the matter.
>
> I don't agree in either case. As has been pointed out repeatedly,
> USENET used to travel via magtape, and probably currently travels
over
> all the media used by the internet, and then some. I've already
offered
> to provide a paper feed to anyone who wants it (and others have
echoed
> that offer).

When I use the term "other medium" I am _not_ refering to the basic
transport mechanism. Yes, Usenet can be delivered by punched paper
tape, carrier pigeon, or clay tablet. The question is - CAN THE
READER THEN POST A RESPONSE AND CONTINUE THE THREAD?

If the answer is yes, the I suspect we are still within Usenet. If
the answer is "of course not" (eg if UNIX World prints my posting)
then we are definitely no longer in Usenet. In between it gets
foggy, but it is then a question of asking some more questions,
like, does the posting still have the same subject classification
it was given by the poster, in the form if its "Newsgroups:" line?
No? Then it is probably no longer Usenet.

Does the article fade away after a while? No? Then you might
have crossed over some magic line into archiving services, although
perhaps the answers to the other questions can sway things here.

In a nutshell, "changing medium" does _not_ mean going from token
ring to ethernet, or disk to paper copy. It means "changing
propogation, distribution or accessibility criteria". If you do a
lot of changing of these, you are probably going outside Usenet
and in potential copyright conflict. You should consider contacting
the posters to get their permission unless there is a disclaimer
letting you reuse without bound.

> As for charging for specific collections - that's what the sys file
> does. As far as I know, no one has set up a newsclip server on their
> machine and allowed people to use it to select articles, but there
> isn't a good reason for not doing so. As to whether they charge for
> the service or not, that has nothing to do with whether the
> distribution is part of USENET.

Actually, I understand that this is exactly how the Newspeak service
from the MIT media lab works, but it is set up to scan commercial
news feeds, for which the appropriate access fee has been charged.
Again, I think simply filtering articles is not enough to take you
out of Usenet. After all, that's what KILL files are for!

> > Actually, I think the big brouhaha over how special Usenet
> > is vastly overrates the complexity of the issue. It is
> > clear in my mind that running a Usenet posting in any
> > commercial mag, lifting a posting to include in a book,
> > etc are clearly out of order, since they involve a change
> > in medium and it is clear to me that the poster retains the
> > copyright to his or her work, including the right to
> > control its use in other mediums.
>
> That I agree with (though not everyone does). Those are *clear*
cases.
> It's the cases that aren't clear that are the problem.

Ah, we find more common ground. Maybe we can all find our way out
of this swamp before my own "Expiry:" date arrives! :-)

> > of the citizenry. Once we agree on that, then it is merely
> > a question of getting a ruling on what the law says about
> > what we are doing. As Mike O'Dell once said (in another
> > context) "Sure it's rocket science, but aren't we all
> > rocket scientists?"
>
> That's the process I'd like to see: an agreement reached among some
> large set of the Usenet community, followed by a legal ruling with
> that agreement in place. I'd *much* rather have that happen than a
> legal ruling with no such agreement in place.

Yes, and there still seems that we have a pretty fundamental
split between those who believe in copyright even in association
with Usenet and those who are arguing that Usenet practice
makes copyright impossible. Sigh. I can't see it getting worked
out in anything like linear time since the two sides just don't share a
common world view.



> .  .  .Your instructions were
> that your posting would go to all sites that are part of that
> distribution, which includes them. A number of others sites have done
> likewise. A great number of other sites just ignore distributions,
due
> to the documentation they got with their news software.

But again, that is an example of faulty implementation. If my bank's
software regularly deposits $50 of my money into someone else's account
I wont let them simply say "well, that's what the software
has always done, so it must be okay". I obviously wanted my
money put into _my_ account. Those were my instructions. If some
banks fail to carry them out, would you argue that I must accept
"current banking practice" and see my money go walkabout? :-)


> > >I've replied to postings, and gotten the response "you should
never
> > >have gotten that, the distribution was <blat>". That's strike one
> > >against using distributions: they don't work as intended.
> >
> > Because people like you don't take the simple steps needed
> > to see that they do.
>
> No, I don't have any reason to take those steps. I don't need to -
I'm
> a leaf site. I don't send the articles to anyone, so I can't possibly
> not obey your "instructions." Likewise, I've declared my site part of
> all distributions, because I want to broaden my horizons.

Actually, returning to Brad's interpretation (tm), this would look like
a clear case of the site that copied it to _you_ violating distribution
instructions. Somebody, somewhere seems to be doing something they
were asked or told not to...

> > >> So how about? Can we all agree on some more words to stick
> > >> in there, like "no_cdrom", or "no_paper", or
> > >> "electronic_only", or even "no_EBCIDC"? Then, if I put
> > > them in and you ignore it, haven't you violated my clearly
> > >> stated wishes not to distribute my work without bound?
> > >
> > >Yes, but if you say "no_cdrom,na" then you get distributed to
_all_ of
> > >na, even places that specify !no_cdrom. Strike two: they don't
work
> > >the way you want them to.
> >
> > Again, you are telling me that there is widespread
> > violation of the authors' instructions, so we should give
> > up. Sounds like we should be collectively tightening our
> > belts and forcing recalcitrant sites to behave in a civil
> > manner.
>
> Go look at rfc822. If a Distributions: line specifies multiple
> distributions, it means it goes to everywhere that gets *either* of
> them, not both of them. So by spreading a distribution of no_cdrom,na
> to all of na, the sites in question are *obeying* the authors
> instructions. It isn't there fault that the author didn't understand
> what she was doing.

Which is why I called for agreement on extension to allow specific
limitations. Someone else has posted a much better version,
using X- extensions that I think (at a very fast quick look) has
promise.

> Now, if you want to change the way distributions work (or, more
> accurately, don't work), you can try. I think there are better ways
to
> go about it, though.

I'm open to suggestions. I was merely trying to focus the debate
on a real suggestion, and get it away from the "Yes it isn't, No,
it is!" tone it had taken. To me (and I _think_ to you, if I read
you correctly) whether I can maintain copyright is not really
an issue. It's how we can get the system to help with carrying out
the author's wishes that we should consider. There are still people
who will simply call us imperialist property-mongers for this
premise. Reconciling these fundamentally opposing views is
to me the real trick, and I'm afraid I have not a drop of
insight to offer on that one.

> > Out of curiosity, where _would_ I get back a set of
> > postings I did to alt.folklore.urban a couple of years
> > ago? I just don't believe that anyone really thinks that
> > the ability to do this is an integral part of Usenet.
>
> I dunno. Try asking on alt.folklore.urban, and here (take it out of
> this thread, though). I've seen such requests be answered before. Not
> for an alt group, though.

The point I was trying to make was that even if we could sometimes
get such a question answered, the ability to get such questions
answered is _not_ an inherent part of Usenet. It is as best
an adjunct service.

> > I also believe that with a combination of the
> > "Distribution:"  and "Expire:" fields, with a few agreed
> > upon extensions, we can manage to control Usenet
> > distribution enough to keep it out of the hands of the
> > lawyers, provided site admins agreed to abide by a few
> > simple rules (like, set up your site to adher to clear
> > instructions already included in the headers).
>
> Hmm - I hadn't though of a combination of fields. As has been pointed
> out before, Expires: currently has a use. And distributions: is
> largely ignored (which is a good argument for using it...).
>
> Personally, I favor newsgroups, for two reasons. 1) Most sites pay
> attention to those when feeding news; 2) It provides a place to put a
> statement about what that group in the header *means*.

I think we are actually closer than a first reading would appear. Now,
how are we going to convince Andrew Ford that it is acceptable
for us to want to share our work with the community for a limited
time, without renouncing all rights to it forever? He seems to
object fairly strenuously to this, even if it means violating
existing copyirght law in the process. :-)


Genung. I don't know how much more of this I can take with
a dose of caffeine...

            - peterd