HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: adb@herboid.uucp (Anthony DeBoer)
Subject: Re: Utility for removing spool dirs of deleted newsgroups
Organization: Linda's Dragon Memorial Society
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 04:40:40 GMT
Keywords: delgroup

In article <1992Jul10.173438.7200@cosy.sbg.ac.at> lendl@cosy.sbg.ac.at (Otmar Lendl) writes:
>The delgroup command doesn't remove the spool-directories
>of deleted groups, so my spool area contains many stale
>directories (such as alt/music/pop/will/eat/itself\
>/the/poppies/are/on/patrol ).
>
>Is there any tools which compares the spool area with the
>active file and removes all unneeded directories ? 
>I only found a tool to create missing directories.

The following is something I wrote long ago to both clear out junk
directories and create ones that should exist.  It generates a shell
script on standard output that will do the work required, so you have
the option of reviewing it before running it.

#--------------------------------CUT HERE-------------------------------------
#! /bin/sh
#
# This is a shell archive.  Save this into a file, edit it
# and delete all lines above this comment.  Then give this
# file to sh by executing the command "sh file".  The files
# will be extracted into the current directory owned by
# you with default permissions.
#
# The files contained herein are:
#
# -rwxr-xr-x   1 adb      scuba        901 Dec 05  1991 nsdirs
#
echo 'x - nsdirs'
if test -f nsdirs; then echo 'shar: not overwriting nsdirs'; else
sed 's/^X//' << '________This_Is_The_END________' > nsdirs
X: nsdirs
X
XNEWSLIB=${NEWSLIB-/usr/lib/news}
XNEWSSPOOL=${NEWSSPOOL-/usr/spool/news}
XNEWSBIN=${NEWSBIN-/usr/lib/newsbin}
X
XTMPA=/tmp/ta$$
XTMPB=/tmp/tb$$
X
Xtrap "rm -f $TMPA $TMPB; exit" 0 1 2 3 4 5 15
X
X# directories that do exist
Xcd $NEWSSPOOL
Xfind * -type d -print | egrep -v '[a-z]*\.' | sort -u > $TMPA
X
X# directories that should exist
Xawk '{ if ( $4 == "m" || $4 == "y" ) print $1 }' $NEWSLIB/active | \
Xawk 'BEGIN { FS = "." } { for (i=NF; i>0; i--) { print $0; $i = "" }}' | \
Xsed -e 's/ *$//' -e 's/[ \.]/\//g' | sort -u > $TMPB
X
X# kill any garbage
Xecho "cd $NEWSSPOOL"
Xcomm -23 $TMPA $TMPB | \
Xawk 'BEGIN { FS = "/"; e = 999; }
X{	if ( NF > e )
X	{	q = "";
X		for (i=1; i<=e; i++) q = q"/"$i;
X		if ( q == d )
X		{	printf "# %s will not exist\n",$0
X			next;
X		}
X	}
X	printf "rm -r %s\n",$0;
X	d = "/"$0;
X	e = NF;
X}'
X
X# make directories that should be made
Xcomm -13 $TMPA $TMPB | sed 's/^/mkdir /'
X
Xexit 0
________This_Is_The_END________
if test `wc -c < nsdirs` -ne 901; then
 echo 'shar: nsdirs was damaged during transit (should have been 901 bytes)'
fi
fi ; : end of overwriting check
exit 0
-- 
Anthony DeBoer                       | Why watch TV, when Netnews provides
adb@herboid.uucp | adb@geac.com      | 100% of your daily requirement for
uunet!geac!herboid!adb               | trivia and meaningless entertainment?
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing
From: forda@gtephx.UUCP (Andrew Ford @ AGCS, Phoenix, Arizona)
Subject: Re: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available
Organization: gte
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 02:35:17 GMT

In article <77N802.Q1b=C01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com>, tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry Carroll) writes:
> In article <mwm.1aud@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us>, mwm@contessa.palo-alto.ca.us 
> (Mike Meyer) writes:
> 
> > 
> > In <2aYG02zf1bOm01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com>, tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry 
> > Carroll) wrote:
> > > Nor do you need one in the US.  But including one eliminates the 
> "innocent 
> > > infringement" defense, which can otherwise be used to reduce (but not 
> > > eliminate) damages.
> > 
> > No, including a copyright does not eliminate the "innocent
> > infringement" defense; if the copying mechanism is automated, then
> > it's possible that nobody read the copyright.
> 
> It might not eliminate "innocent infringement", but it clearly emliminates 
> the "innocent infringement" defense.
> 
> "If a notice of copyright in the form and position specified by this section 
> appears on the published copy or copies to which a defendant in a copyright 
> infringement suit had access, then no weight shall be given to such 
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    How could a sysop possibly have the ability to access all posts to 
see if they have explicit copyrights?  Impractical at best.  Netnews
is not a case of handing the "work" to a person to get it copied: it
is a case of the poster putting the work into thousands of machines for
automatic processing.  

With hundreds of newsgroups publishing tens of thousands of articles 
daily, it would be fairly easy, IMHO, to show that the owners of 
the computers which distribute netnews do not have access to 
copyrights in individual posts.

If the news software were different, then this may not be true.


-- 
"25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with
no permit of any kind: some say it's crazy.  However, 4 out of 5 US murders are 
committed in the other half of the country: so who is crazy?"   -  Andrew Ford
gtephx!forda@enuucp.eas.asu.edu  OR  !uunet!samsung!romed!enuucp!gtephx!forda
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing
From: dejesus@pluto.nwc.navy.mil (Francisco X DeJesus)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin
Subject: I have the newsgroups list, now what?
Keywords: newsgroups active update
Date: 21 Jul 92 17:07:23 GMT
Organization: Science Applications International Corp.

Allright... I can grab an up-to-date "newsgroups" file via ftp or get the
one that's posted here. That's not a problem. The problem is:

	1- how do I add the missing newsgroups to my active file?

	2- when that is done, how can I make it so my system gets these
	   newsgroups' articles from its feed? If this is automatic then
	   I may have another problem, because I have several newsgroups
	   in my active file, with no articles, though I can telnet (NNTP
	   port) to my feed host and manually see they have articles for
	   them! 

Forgive me if these questions have been asked recently and/or if they are
supposed to be in the docs somewhere (I didn't install news here and am
trying to reverse-engineer it to figure everything out). Thanks in advance...

-- 
#define DISCLAIMER   "I speak only for myself!"
Francisco X DeJesus  -------- S A I C --------  dejesus@archimedes.nwc.navy.mil
From: mathew <mathew@mantis.co.uk>
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: article size limit
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 92 12:54:28 BST
Distribution: world
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.

hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phillip M. Hallam-Baker) writes:
> In article <iFVuNB25w165w@mantis.co.uk>, mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) writes:
> |>It is a good idea to limit your articles to chunks of 64KB or less, in orde
> |>to avoid causing others unnecessary pain and inconvenience.
> 
> x= 64 seems rather outdated.
> 
> Since very few posts go to more than 10 continuations, x=1024 would be a
> better setting.

Hardly.  For starters, x=1024 won't fit on a 3.5" 720K floppy disk.  For a
number of months I ran a newsfeed using 3.5" disks as the transport medium.
64 is much better; it'll even fit on those old 5.25" disks that some people
still use.


mathew
-- 
Ceci | n'est pas une pipe.

Xref: sparky news.admin:6405 comp.org.eff.talk:5037 misc.legal.computing:1644 misc.legal:15211
From: news@wolves.uucp (The Wolfe of the Den)
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing,misc.legal
Subject: Re: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available
Date: 30 Jul 92 19:30:33 GMT
Reply-To: news@wolves.durham.nc.us
Organization: Wolves Den UNIX
X-Md4-Signature: 245b97cd74fc9bf0079fada5eff72663

In article <1992Jul29.023517.28331@gtephx.UUCP> forda@gtephx.UUCP (Andrew Ford @ AGCS, Phoenix, Arizona) writes:
>In article <77N802.Q1b=C01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com>, tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry Carroll) writes:
>> "If a notice of copyright in the form and position specified by this section 
>> appears on the published copy or copies to which a defendant in a copyright 
>> infringement suit had access, then no weight shall be given to such 
>   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>    How could a sysop possibly have the ability to access all posts to 
>see if they have explicit copyrights?  Impractical at best.  Netnews
>is not a case of handing the "work" to a person to get it copied: it
>is a case of the poster putting the work into thousands of machines for
>automatic processing.  
>
>With hundreds of newsgroups publishing tens of thousands of articles 
>daily, it would be fairly easy, IMHO, to show that the owners of 
>the computers which distribute netnews do not have access to 
>copyrights in individual posts.

	The word is "access" NOT ability.  The news administrator, or
the machine administrator, in practically all cases, has the privledges
necessary to examine all the information in the system.

	The mere volume is not, currently, a defense for not seeing
something that *can* be seen if looked for.

	I have a fantasy that someday, somewhere, someone being tried
for some obscure violation of some massive law, will drag into court all
the paper that embodies the law in question (like maybe the two or three
tons of paper that would constitute the entire Internal Revenue Code)
and argue that it was "impossible" to know the law given the sheer mass
of its encoding.  Would "ignorance of the law" become a valid defense in
such a case?
-- 
Usenet Net News Administrator @ The Wolves Den  (G. Wolfe Woodbury)
news%wolves@cs.duke.edu     ...duke!wolves!news     "We don't need no
There is a real person who watches this account.   stinking disclaimers"
From: hartman@ulogic.UUCP (Richard M. Hartman)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: The Great Floating USENET Copyright War (was: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available)
Date: 28 Jul 92 16:39:23 GMT
Organization: negligable

In article <6998@lib.tmc.edu> jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
>[We don't get misc.legal.computing here.]

Neither do we		:-)

>1) It makes no provision at all for someone off the net (or, for that matter,
>someone who doesn't know how to deal with a bang address) to request
>permission for republication.

Immaterial.  Would "Richard M. Hartman" be enough for you to request
permission if you didn't even know what state I lived in?

>2) I strongly doubt that "alice!jj" is a legally acceptable way to identify
>that particular person.

Questionable, but it *does* identify a computer address that one
person (presumably) could show "ownership" of.  It would be sort 
of like saying "Resident of 10 Downing St."  If the date is included,
this would be more than enough to identify the author.....

>3) If such a case comes to court, it would be difficult to prove to a court's
>satisfaction that the plaintiff is indeed the person who wrote those words.

I think this is really a restatement of point 2.




=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
And the men who hold high places	|
must be the ones who start		|	-Richard Hartman	
to mold a new reality			|	hartman@uLogic.COM
closer to the heart!			|
Xref: sparky news.admin:6364 comp.org.eff.talk:5000 misc.legal.computing:1614
From: jj@alice.att.com (jj, old curmudgeon and general grump)
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing
Subject: Re: What is "pay-per-read"?
Date: 24 Jul 92 15:36:31 GMT
Reply-To: jj@alice.UUCP (jj, old curmudgeon and general grump)
Organization: NJ State Home for Bewildered Terminals

In article <1992Jul24.010704.4092@octel.com> shaun@octel.com (Ralph Neutrino) writes:

>You poor babbling sod.  I am going to construct a sale of a printed copy of one
>of your articles, which will be just as artificial and contrived as imagining a
>situation in which someone would want to use one of your whiney martyr articles
>for the "information" contained therein, just to break your copyright.
                                                    ^     ^       ^
Sorry, they don't break just because I don't bother to recover
virtually non-existant (in this case) damages from some petty criminal.

Please let the police know where and when.  I don't need to be involved,
and since the damages for THIS one appear to be entirely yours,
and self=inflicted by yourself, don't bother me with it.  Just call
the cops and tell them you want to be arrested for a copyright
violation.

Why you want to do it, I have no idea. 
-- 
 Bush    *Copyright alice!jj 1992, all rights reserved, except transmission
   vs       *by USENET and like free 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.
From: holland@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Rich Holland)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: hiding sex info from minors (was: "Computers graphic when it comes...)
Date: 26 Jul 92 07:30:20 GMT
Article-I.D.: matt.14unfcINNfj1
Organization: Kansas State University
NNTP-Posting-Host: matt.ksu.ksu.edu

jbw@bigbird.bu.edu (Joe Wells) writes:

>> I agree with the point of not letting children see or read alt.sex.* ...

>Why?  Do you feel it is better to keep children ignorant of some things?
>Do you think sex is wrong or shameful?

Probably...

>I find censorship of anything at any time for any reason to be wrong,
>immoral, and evil.

Agreed!  As a child, I was allowed to read anything I wished, and watch
whatever I wanted on television.  I remember as a 10-year old being told
by my friends at school what a "real porn flick" the movie "10" was -- so
dad taped it at 2:00 am for me and i watched it the next day.  Not much
interesting for a 10-year old, to tell the truth.  *grin*  But my 
friends were impressed, and I couldn't understand at the time why their
parents didn't let THEM watch it....guess I was just a more "well-
educated" kid, eh?  :-)

-- 
Rich Holland             | INTERNET:  holland@matt.ksu.ksu.edu
419 Marlatt Hall         | BITNET  :  holland@ksuvm
Manhattan, KS  66506     | UUCP    :  ...rutgers!matt.ksu.ksu.edu!holland
"Jesus saves...but Gretzky gets the rebound!  He shoots!  He scores!!"
Xref: sparky news.admin:6310 alt.censorship:6408 alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk:2426
From: mathew <mathew@mantis.co.uk>
Newsgroups: news.admin,alt.censorship,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk
Subject: Re: "Computers graphic when it comes to porn"
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 14:00:55 BST
Distribution: world
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.

evansmp@uhura.aston.ac.uk (Mark Evans) writes:
> I wonder, in fact how anyone who wants to render writing, pictures or
> whatever about sex can possibly be older that about 13 themselves.

I wonder how anyone over the age of about 13 could want to look at pictures of
people playing football, but millions do.


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: barrett@daisy.ee.und.ac.za (Alan P Barrett)
Subject: Re: Copyrights on netnews articles
Organization: Univ. Natal, Durban, S. Africa
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 10:15:17 GMT

In article <1992Jul23.190525.29053@clarinet.com>,
brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:
> In article <1992Jul23.081204.18538@ee.und.ac.za>
> barrett@daisy.ee.und.ac.za (Alan P Barrett) writes:
> >In the free areas the expectation is wide and uncontrolled distribution
> >of verbatim copies.  If it's a verbatim copy (including the headers)
> >then it's part of Usenet; regardless of the medium, which might be disk,
> >satellite, CD-ROM, tape, punched cards, newspapers, posters in public
>
> We can only list that as an expectation if there is no copyright licence
> on the material.   You can only argue an implicit copyright licence
> where there isn't an explicit copyright licence, or in some very limited
> and particular cases.

We can say (and you, Brad, have been saying) that the poster *commands*
the copies to be made.  Well, perhaps we can say that only if the
article remains in machine readable form.

> There have been some cases where copying has been allowed -- notably
> to do things like timeshift a TV program or archive software you own.
> Specific (USA) caselaw has established a precedent that they can't
> forbid this in their licence.  But remember that these are very
> specific and limited cases.  I doubt you will ever see a declaration
> of permission for unlimited copying.

Anybody can get a feed of current articles if they wish to.  Standard
Usenet practice includes archiving for an unlimited period, so anybody
can obtain copies of old articles if they wish to; there is thus no
requirement that the copying be automatic.  The poster of any article
knows (or ought to know) this.  The fact that the article is posted
indicates that the poster desires the creation of many verbatim copies,
with no restriction on the number of copies or the time at which the
copies are made.  I earlier said that the poster should expect that
there is no restriction on the medium that carries the copies, but
perhaps that is not so -- This leaves the question of which media are
permitted.

--apb
Alan Barrett, Dept. of Electronic Eng., Univ. of Natal, Durban, South Africa
RFC822: barrett@ee.und.ac.za             Bang: m2xenix!quagga!undeed!barrett
Xref: sparky news.admin:6108 alt.censorship:6229 alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk:2380 alt.sex.bondage:14395
From: kashif@ocf.berkeley.edu (Mohammad K. Qayyum)
Newsgroups: news.admin,alt.censorship,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.sex.bondage
Subject: GIF files
Date: 24 Jul 92 03:25:28 GMT
Organization: U. C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: headcrash.berkeley.edu


Hi, folks, does anyone have some computer pictures, e.g. GIF or JPEG 
format, of any er... erotica? If you do I would appreciate it if
anyone would send it to me. Please contact me at kashif@ocf.berkeley.edu
Thanx in advance.
.
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing
From: brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available
Organization: ClariNet Communications Corp.
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 20:44:58 GMT

In article <1992Jul29.023517.28331@gtephx.UUCP> forda@gtephx.UUCP (Andrew Ford @ AGCS, Phoenix, Arizona) writes:
>    How could a sysop possibly have the ability to access all posts to 
>see if they have explicit copyrights?  Impractical at best.  Netnews
>is not a case of handing the "work" to a person to get it copied: it
>is a case of the poster putting the work into thousands of machines for
>automatic processing.  

There is no question that the sysop has the ability to access all posts.
Because the copyright law is explicit that, in the USA the exact word
"copyright" must be used, along with a date, writing a computer program
to spot legit copyright messages is trivial.  In fact, I'll do it in my
own news processing language:

	accept if body has "copyright.*19[0-9][0-9]";

There, done.   Now you could scan all the resulting articles to see what
they say, or reject them.   Doing the former is certainly possible, just
not desireable. 

However the commercial online services ALL DO IT.  They pay people to
look at all files uploaded to libraries or posted to BBs, to look for
things like copyright violations, viri, etc.   So most big networks are
doing it -- it's clearly not beyond the realm of possibility.
(And they don't even use the computer search above.  Somebody just sits there
and reads it all.   USENET does not have the advantage of a central authority
to assign and pay such people, but it has other advantages.  But they are
not likely to sway a court.)
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Sunnyvale, CA 408/296-0366
Xref: sparky news.admin:6351 comp.org.eff.talk:4991 misc.legal.computing:1598
From: jj@alice.att.com (jj, copyright curmudgeon)
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing
Subject: Re: Net Culture assumptions! (very long!)
Date: 30 Jul 92 14:43:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: alice.23360
Reply-To: jj@alice.UUCP (jj, copyright curmudgeon)
Organization: NJ State Home for Bewildered Terminals

In article <1992Jul29.024520.28473@gtephx.UUCP> forda@gtephx.UUCP (Andrew Ford @ AGCS, Phoenix, Arizona) writes:
>Nobody said he was.  The "Usenet Primer" contains terms and conditions
>which apply to your use of the net.  You would do well to read those
>documents in news.announce.newuser.  They are put there so that
>new users have an opportunity to understand what they are doing
>when they post to usenet.  
How ridiculous.  The USENET Primer is an advisory article,
written by an individual, with comments from lots of other
individuals, posted by an individual, and reposted as a public
service.  No poster (at this site, which has been a USENET site
for at least 13 years, even before the rabbit died :-) has even
been asked to even acknowledge that they've read it, let alone
sign a paper saying it is acknowledged as a contract.

Of course, even if they'd done so, it would be utterly meaningless,
because all the USENET Primer is is an article, posted by a
(Mostly Former) USENET participant, carrying no more weight or
authority than any other article posted anywhere to USENET,
be it some nasty person posting IHR articles, or someone
on soc.culture.asian.american claiming that it's better politics
to marry a non-white person, or be it this article itself.

Andrew, you're wasting our time, please give it up.  I'm going to 
start ignoring your provocation and nonsensical legal claims.
-- 
 Bush    *Copyright alice!jj 1992, all rights reserved, except transmission
   vs       *by USENET and like free 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.
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available
Date: 25 Jul 92 22:44:25 GMT
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <jim.712012986@piggy> jim@ferkel.ucsb.edu (Jim Lick) writes:
>>It is not the medium, but the usage.  Backing up to a CD-ROM (ok, WORM)
>>would not be wrong.  Selling copies of the magtape for profit would be.
>
>I seem to recall that UUNET used to or still is selling news to special
>people (FBI or CIA or something like that) who are unable to receive
>it through other means.

At one point the FBI had a magtape feed.  Nowadays they are online, I
believe.  (And according to Rick Adams, if you ask them whether they're
monitoring the net for signs of crime, they just laugh and say "we've
got work to do".)

The main feed to Australia was via magtape at one time.

There really isn't any way to draw a meaningful distinction based on
what communications medium is used for a feed.  It's perfectly reasonable
to feed people via the proverbial car full of magtapes in some circumstances.
-- 
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry