HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Rmgroup/newgroup policies
Date: 13 Aug 92 11:11:06 GMT
Reply-To: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Organization: Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.

In article <bswhlz.ii2@wang.com> fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) writes:
>						    Besides, with this,
>articles in legitimate groups that you're slow in creating just get
>discarded.

	[As it happens, we create "legitimate" groups automatically, we
just filter "alt".  Since doing so, I have been asked to add just *one*
of the hundreds of groups that have whizzed by.]

>	     They don't even get passed to your downstream feeds.

	True.  Not a problem for us.

>>		   Every time you read the news, you're invited to subscribe
>> to yet another *stupid* group;
>
>That's because you're using a *stupid* newsreader.  Switch to something
>that doesn't consider it a red-alert emergency when a group is created or
>deleted.

	You mean it's a red-alert emergency to *create* a group, but you
aren't then going to bother to tell the readers?  Umm.

>A legitimate group which isn't created because the admin is on vacation is
>more serious than getting than a silly group that you didn't want to see.

	No it isn't!  If you run your own site with your own money, then
you can do as you like, but I, and I guess the admins of a large majority
of readers [not necessarily sites], have to persuade the Powers-That-Be
that the resources consumed by News are worth while.  My Head of Department
can see that "sci.math" and "comp.lang.c" and so on are (occasionally)
useful.  He can accept that "alt.sex" and "soc.culture.british" come with
the package.  But if he hears of "alt.name.your.own.silly.newsgroup", either
as a user or as a topic for discussion over coffee, he gets the impression
that the whole caboodle is a *joke* -- and an expensive joke.  "Please, HoD,
can we buy another disc?" "Why don't you just delete all those silly news
files?" "Please, HoD, we need a new computer." "If you stopped people
reading those silly news files, this machine wouldn't be overloaded."
We haven't actually had those conversations, and I don't want to.

	This is quite apart from the fact that if the admin goes on
vacation, and there is no-one else around who can keep any sort of eye
on the computer, you have worse potential problems than the odd "alt"
group not being created instantly.

>they can just put "set new-group-action 0" in their init files.  I don't
>know any that's actually gone to the trouble.

	Of course not.  The frustrated users simply go away.  Only a small
percentage of users actually read news, according to the Arbitron statistics.
On this site, at least, lots of others have tried once or twice and then
given up.  We have to make their initial experience more, not less, friendly.

-- 
Andy Walker, Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
anw@maths.nott.ac.uk
From: hartman@ulogic.UUCP (Richard M. Hartman)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: "By Command of the Poster" considerd harmful (Was: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available)
Date: 13 Aug 92 22:16:12 GMT
Organization: negligable

The proposed script is not a part of the USENET distribution mechanism.
It would be like saying that I could place a tap on your phone and
you couldn't do anything about it because I called it standard phone
equipment.  It's not the equipment, it's what you do with it.  Submitting
it for publication is a violation of the original poster's copyright.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
And when you stop and think about it	|
(you won't believe it's true)		|	-Richard Hartman	
That all the love you've been giving	|	hartman@uLogic.COM
has all been meant for you.		|
From: richb@kronos.com (Rich Braun)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: "Newsgroup-info" command for news software
Date: 17 Aug 92 17:01:57 GMT
Organization: Kronos Inc. / Waltham, MA
Disclaimer: This posting is a personal opinion and not that of Kronos Inc.

marshall@marshall.cs.unc.edu (Jonathan A. Marshall) writes:
>Here's an idea for a new command that would be helpful for us users of
>the Internet.  ...  When you type
>G, the system would display some basic information pertaining to the
>current newsgroup [including a policy message/charter].
>...
>I don't know who to send this suggestion to, so I'm posting it to the
>network in the hope that the discussion will reach the right ears.

This is the right newsgroup, and I can recall posting this same
suggestion a long time ago.  There is a class of BBS software which
contains this concept, VMS Notes, Lotus Notes, Plato Notes (they all
seem to be called something-notes, except for a variant I developed
for the DEC-10 a decade ago and named READ).  On Plato it was called
the "Policy Note" and it took a single keystroke to access from the
thread-selection level of a notesfile.  That's the oldest software
package of this genre which I've used, dating back to the mid-70s.

The problem I've found with trn is that the help messages are basically
long laundry lists of unsorted options, and it's more than a little
overwhelming to the novice user.  It also lacks a simple message editor,
and thus far I've not found a good one out there on the net.  (Fundamentally,
I want an embedded editor which prompts a novice how to save & exit!  We
have 500 potential users here, and about 20 current ones.)

Even if this feature were added to trn, it wouldn't help novice users
unless the help messages were restructured, IMHO.  It's almost tempting
to say that an entirely new user interface is needed to address a broader
variety of levels of expertise.

This opinion only applies to rn and trn; I've not used the other Unix
variants, most particularly X-based versions.  I've seen Trumpet under
DOS and believe it has a great deal of promise once the installation
headaches are solved and a thread-selection menu is added.

News transport, of course, would not have to be modified in order to
support this feature, which could be keyed off a control header, newsgroup
name, or distribution.  (It could work rather much like the special
newsgroup news.answers, just having a more convenient user interface.)

-rich
Xref: sparky news.admin:7225 misc.legal.computing:2006
From: lowen@lorc.UUCP (Lamar Owen)
Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal.computing
Subject: Re: Copyright--Laws in general
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 92 13:15:30 EDT
Organization: LORC Enterprises

leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) writes:
> lowen@lorc.UUCP (Lamar Owen) writes:
> >Given the general ignorance of the law by most Usenetters (including and 
> >especially myself), why hasn't someone made a database of law texts availabl
> >for online perusal??  Is there such a service already available?  Preferrabl
> >by e-mail or telnet.
> 
> Such databases *are* available. But they are commercial (Westlaw and Lexis
> come to mind). Due to oddities of the contracts by which they get info
> from the US government, they have an *effective* monopoly on electronicly
> available law libraries!

It just figures! And these info services are probably run by lawyers.

> There are moves afoot in Congress to stop this sort of thing. If they
> pass then you'd be able to get the same info from (say) the Library
> of Congress, and it'd be public domain.

That would be ideal, because then the public would be more informed about
what Congress actually *does*... Hmmm.. Does Congress REALLY want to do this?
:-)

> As far as *state* law goes, I have heard that at least one state claims
> copyright on it's laws! Thus, unless you have their permission, you
> can't quote them! Talk about silly laws...

Ah, you CAN quote them, you just can't reproduce in whole or in part, in any
media, electronic or otherwise.  Quoting is part of "fair use", if I am not
vastly mistaken.

> Leonard Erickson		      leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com

--

Lamar Owen, Systems Consultant, GE Lighting Systems, Hendersonville, NC
***********************************************************************
 Opinions expressed herein are the author's and do not reflect policy
   or opinions of the General Electric Company or its subsidiaries.
***********************************************************************
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b,news.software.readers
From: a3@rivm.nl (Adri Verhoef)
Subject: Re: "Newsgroup-info" command for news software
Organization: Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieuhygiene,Bilthoven,NL
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 01:22:12 GMT

What about storing the FAQ for a certain newsgroup in article 0 ?

This would probably mean a new headerline or rather a new Control:
command, say "Control: faq name.of.the.newsgroup".  This would
replace file "0" in the designated newsgroup by the new article.

Newsreaders would not notice article 0, but when the supposedly
Newsgroup-info command would be issued, article 0 would be retrieved
by the newsreader.

Adri Verhoef (a3@rivm.nl)
-- 
* Slade Mailing List:  slade-request@rivm.nl                | Did you know
* European top 20               : a3@rivm.nl                | that applauding
* Nederlandse songfragmentenquiz: a3@rivm.nl (Adri Verhoef) | causes
* Dutch Artists Lyrics Quiz     : a3@rivm.nl                | blindness?
Xref: sparky news.admin:7035 comp.org.eff.talk:5370 misc.legal.computing:1925
From: mathew <mathew@mantis.co.uk>
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing
Subject: Re: Why we need a "Copyright:" field (was: Re: NetNews/CD  .  .  .)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 13:25:55 BST
Distribution: world
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.

bengtl@maths.lth.se (Bengt Larsson) writes:
> It seems you think you have the "right to post with whatever
> copyright". But you haven't. You may have to accept certain conditions
> on distribution in order to have your article automatically distributed.
> 
> The newsstand analogy isn't that bad. If you demand that an
> article of yours sent to a magazine shouldn't be distributed to certain
> newsstands, then your article may have to be refused.

Yes, but the person who wants to do the redistributing refuses the article,
not the author.

If I send an article to a magazine saying it shouldn't be distributed to
certain newsstands, the magazine has to accept my conditions or reject the
article.  They aren't allowed to say "Oh, well, you sent it to us, so you
must be consenting to our redistributing it in the way we do our other
articles".

Similarly, I do not believe that submitting an article to Usenet implies any
consent to anything.  There's certainly no contract of any sort, no
agreement.  The newsgroups are filled with people who have no idea how large
Usenet is in geographical terms, so how can they have consented to having
their articles distributed to places they didn't even know existed?


mathew
-- 
"Even the most bizarre of the unions (probably that between a cat's gall
 stone and a single note 'G' from CNN's ident theme) managed to convey a
 sense of rampant impropriety."  -- 'Fortran Five', Simon G. Lawrence Leonard

Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing
From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: Why we need a "Copyright: " field (was: Re: NetNews/CD . . .)
Organization: Taronga Park BBS
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 01:55:22 GMT

In article <1992Aug21.163304.23151@porthos.cc.bellcore.com> whs70@dancer.uucp (22501-sohl) writes:
>Welcome to the world of newspaper reporting.  As you've already
>found out, even your efforts to have the paper correct
>or retract its statements got you no where.  So what does this,
>then, have to do with the onging "copyrights on USENET discussion?"

Someone was claiming that this didn't happen. How that's relevant,
you'll have to ask *him*.
-- 
                                                                `-_-'
                         Have you hugged your wolf today?        'U`

Peter da Silva, Taronga Park BBS, Houston, TX  +1 713 568 0480/1032
From: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: "Computers graphic when it comes to porn"
Date: 19 Aug 92 01:12:56 GMT
Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Canada

In article <a_rubin.714066296@dn66> a_rubin@dsg4.dse.beckman.com (Arthur Rubin) writes:
>In <3726@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca> clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:

>>Furthermore, on a more general level, most universities have constitutions
>>or codes of ethics that require them to be more selective of material than
>>the law would necessarily require them to.  Even in the USA.

>Actually, the code of ethics in most universities "require" them to be LESS
>selective of material than the law requires them to.  I believe his to be
>generally ignored, but it is still the case.

The codes of ethics of many Universities provide for disciplinary
action against students that unduly harass others, or publish
material that is potentially harmful.  (the language is often somewhat
archaic, referring to things such as "bringing discredit to the University")

For example, a student can usually be expelled for such things as (after
repeated warnings) posting signs saying "no means harder".  Over the last
couple of months, several American examples of this sort of thing have been
described (after the incident at Queens U).  As far as I am aware, no student
has been expelled from a Canadian University for such behaviour, but some
have been threatened with expulsion.  I remember several examples of
expulsion in similar incidents reported while the Queens U thing was
being discussed.

Or, I really wonder how long Keegstra would last at an American college.
Not very long.
-- 
Chris Lewis; clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca; Phone: Canada 613 832-0541
Psroff 3.0 info: psroff-request@ferret.ocunix.on.ca
Ferret list: ferret-request@ferret.ocunix.on.ca
Newsgroups: news.admin
From: tal@Warren.MENTORG.COM (Tom Limoncelli)
Subject: Re: Usenet Feeds Available By Fax!
Organization: Mentor Graphics, Silicon Design Division
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 15:17:51 GMT

In <1992Aug16.061244.942@spatula.rent.com> ahm@spatula.rent.com (Andreas Meyer) writes:

>So how many rolls of fax paper does it take for a full newsfeed? :-)

Well, since you live in Dunellen, NJ let me put it this way.  You've
been to the "Home Depot" in Edison, right?  Right now about half of the
building is being used to store next week's shipment of fax paper.
Remember, we only support 50pt Helvetica-Oblique.

Tom
:-), for those unsure.
-- 
Tom Limoncelli -- tal@warren.mentorg.com (work) -- tal@plts.uucp (play)
"Oh! I thought it was one of those useless demos of everything that
    a GUI builder could do." -Anonymous person watching demo of
         Solaris 2.0's graphical tool for managing NIS+
From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: "By Command of the Poster" considerd harmful (Was: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available)
Date: 16 Aug 92 13:25:24 GMT
Organization: Taronga Park BBS

In article <246@ulogic.UUCP> hartman@ulogic.UUCP (Richard M. Hartman) writes:
>Seems like the person who created the script would be liable.
>The magazine editor took it on good faith -- he obtained the
>article from a submissions address.

Magazines get all sorts of stuff sent to them for publication that the
submitter has no rights to. They can be and are sued for it if they didn't
make reasonable checks to be sure that the stuff was legitimate.
-- 
                                                                `-_-'
                         Have you hugged your wolf today?        'U`

Peter da Silva, Taronga Park BBS, Houston, TX  +1 713 568 0480/1032
From: mtalbot@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au.ua.oz (David Bowman)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Computer graphics and child pornography
Date: 15 Aug 92 07:16:37 GMT




	I've seen questions raised in this news group about child pornography
being posted to the net.  With the advances in computers coming almost daily
it will soon be possible (if it isn't already) to generate pictures which are,
for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from pictures which have been
scanned in.

	One question I haven't seen answerred yet is.  

		??? WHAT IS CHILD PORNOGRAPHY ???

	If anyone can come up with reasonable definitions for both "child" and
for "pornography" why not post your definitions? [by the way, statements of
"you know what a child is" or "you know what pornography is" will be laughed
at.  I have yet to see two people agree on a definition for "child" (except
in individual cases), let alone agree on one for "pornography" !!]

	As soon as it is possible for a group of people (ie more than 2) to
agree on defintions of "child" and "pornography" we can start talking about
whether it is harmful to (i)	the "child"
			 (ii)	the general public
			 (iii) 	certain individuals
			 (iv) 	the world in general

	Would someone care to answer {HINT: I'm not looking for comments, I'm
looking for ANSWERS!!!}
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing
From: rusty@anasazi.com (Rusty Carruth)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Top 25 News Submitters by Site by Kbytes for the last 2 weeks
Date: 12 Aug 92 21:46:27 GMT
Organization: Anasazi Inc, Phoenix AZ USA

(Hope I got the newsgroup right, if not I apoligize!)

In article <1992Aug9.033018.1098@uunet.uu.net> newsstats@uunet.UU.NET writes:
>
>			      66% alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless
>			      33% alt.binaries.pictures.erotica
>			      93% alt.binaries.pictures
>			      99% alt.binaries.pictures.misc
>			      99% alt.binaries.sounds.misc

Ok, I'd just about decided that the alt.binaries heirarchy was dead,
and now I see that folks are still posting at a prodigious rate to
the alt.binaries tree.

(Why do I say I thought it was dead?  Because I've not seen anything
in the alt.binaries tree except in the discussion groups)

Is some site somewhere (probably upstream from me only :-) no longer 
carrying any of the alt.binaries tree?

Rusty@anasazi.com
Xref: sparky news.admin:7190 comp.org.eff.talk:5461 misc.legal.computing:1992
From: jj@alice.att.com (jj, curmudgeon and clueless old white boy)
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing
Subject: Re: Why we need a "Copyright: " field (was: Re: NetNews/CD . . .)
Date: 20 Aug 92 16:43:03 GMT
Article-I.D.: alice.23498
Reply-To: jj@alice.UUCP (jj, curmudgeon and clueless old white boy)
Organization: NJ State Home for Bewildered Terminals

In article <7JHILW8@taronga.com> peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes:

>Why not? The Houston Chronicle does. And they have shown no reluctance to
>quote net articles and email (which is why I no longer subscribe).

And if pressed, which they most surely should have been, they 
would have justified their use of articles under "fair use".
If they take quotes, it's fair use.  If something is "newsworthy"
newspapers in particular often try to justify theft under
'fair use' but have also (yes, I speak from experience) as fair use,
even if they take the whole thing, of some significant length.

E-mail should have been followed up under the electronic privacy
act, I think.  It would be interesting to see if the
lawn-order administration would be so eager to support
their law when it worked against their desire to enforce
conservative Christian religious dogma on all of us.

Of course, they have expensive lawyers and have shown themselves
perfectly willing to use jingoism in place of either honesty
and/or legality, and they can probably afford to buy justice the
same way any other rich entity can.
-- 
 Bush    *Copyright alice!jj 1992, all rights reserved, except transmission
   vs       *by USENET and like facilities granted.      Said permission is
 Clinton  --    *granted only for complete copies that include this notice.
 Just Say !NO!       *Use on pay-for-read services specifically disallowed.
Newsgroups: news.admin,alt.censorship,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,sfu.general
From: jamie@cs.sfu.ca (Jamie Andrews)
Subject: Re: "Computers graphic when it comes to porn"
Organization: CSS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 19:36:01 GMT

In article <W29I7XM@taronga.com> peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
|In article <1992Aug11.183602.4348@cs.sfu.ca> jamie@cs.sfu.ca (Jamie Andrews) writes:
|>In article <xczmsjg.barry@netcom.com> barry@netcom.com (Kenn Barry) writes:
|>>...suppression of
|>>"porn" is a Victorian phenomenon and was little-practised before the
|>>19th century.
|
|>     That is, little-practised when the media had very little
|>distribution and most people were illiterate.
|
|There has always been a *lot* of what you call "porn" around. Please
|check any good university library for a number of relevant historical
|texts.

     This does not contradict what I was saying.  I was not
denying that "porn" existed, I was saying that it was not seen
as a major problem until it had wide audiences.

     BTW I try to avoid using the word "porn" or "pornography"
when talking about erotic literature in general, so your scare
quotes apply mainly to Kenn's mistaken impression of me as a
Dworkinist.

--Jamie.
  jamie@cs.sfu.ca
"Every \item command in item_list must have an optional argument." LaTeX pg.168
From: ahm@spatula.rent.com (Andreas Meyer)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Usenet Feeds Available By Fax!
Date: 16 Aug 92 06:12:44 GMT
Reply-To: ahm@spatula.rent.com (Andreas Meyer)
Organization: Utensil Computers & Restaurant Supply, Dunellen NJ

gtoal@stack.urc.tue.nl writes:
> In article <hotfax@plts.uucp> tal@plts.uucp (Tom Limoncelli) writes:
> >Tom Limoncelli       Makers of NewsFax, the ONLY Usenet-by-fax service!
> 
> You thought you were joking?  I've had a personal usenet->fax gateway
> going for some time.  It's trivial to hack up.

So how many rolls of fax paper does it take for a full newsfeed? :-)

Andy
--
 Andreas Meyer, N2FYE               Warning: due to the shortage of robots,
 ahm@spatula.rent.com               our workers are human and will therefore
 ..!rutgers!bobsbox!spatula!ahm     react unpredictably under stress.
Newsgroups: news.admin
From: multics@acm.rpi.edu (Multics)
Subject: Re: hiding sex info from minors
Organization: The Voice of Fate
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 23:37:43 GMT

In article <226@ulogic.UUCP> hartman@ulogic.UUCP (Richard M. Hartman) writes:
[edited for bandwidth]
>>How can something that has already happened for a specious argument?
>>People have been arrested when the photomat people reported children
>>playing in the sprinkler as "child pornography".
>
>Interesting question.  Hadn't heard of that case.  On the other hand,
>just because the chosen enforcers of the law are jerks, does not make
>the law a bad thing.
>
>I have heard of far worse abuses perpertrated *by* the system when
>it comes to child welfare.  I would, nonetheless, rather have the
>system remain (and try to pound some common sense into those idiots
>who cannot see straight) than junk the system.
>
>Such cases are, by far, the exception and not the rule.  Such a
>case should have been easily appealed and won.  Actually such a
>case should have been dismissed, or better yet thrown out by the
>investigating officers when they saw the rest of the roll of the
>family's vacation pics.
>
This is from memory of an article I ran across in another usenet group
and/or saw on a television news program within the last 2 weeks:

A mother was breast feeding her child and became aroused, she attempted
to contact a suitable authority to find out if this is normal (it is).
She was referred to social services who immediatly decided that she
was abusing her child and had the child taken away.  She has been
fighting for over 6 months now to get her child back for the NYS dept
of social services.  I belive this is going on in Syracuse, NY.
The police have cleared her of all charges after she spent a night in jail.


-- 
Richard Shetron  multics%acm.rpi.edu@rpi.edu  multics@hermes.acm.rpi.edu
What is the Meaning of Life?      There is no meaning,
It's just a consequence of complex carbon based chemistry; don't worry about it
The Super 76, "Free Aspirin and Tender Sympathy", Las Vegas Strip.
Newsgroups: news.admin,alt.censorship,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk