From: lowen@lorc.UUCP (Lamar Owen)
Newsgroups: alt.culture.usenet,news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing,misc.int-pr
Subject: Re: NetNews/CD - USENET News Available
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 92 14:22:52 EDT
Organization: LORC Enterprises

forda@gtephx.UUCP (Andrew Ford @ AGCS, Phoenix, Arizona) writes:

> By posting, you request distribution throughout all of computers
> on the USENET.  Some of those will put your post on a CD ROM and 
> sell it: just like you asked.
> 
> Unfortunately, USENET does not provide for partial distribution:
> you request total distribution (by posting) or you don't post.

Aha!  Time to kill two birds with one stone...

Usenet, as per RFC 1036, does indeed allow for distributing to certain hosts.
So, in theory at least, if you specifically didn't want CD distribution, you
might put a distribution: !CD in you message. It would then be up to the
CD admin to properly configure the software to reject articles with the
distribution: !CD header in them.

Note also that if a poster puts a distribution line in the header, that any
sites, whether due to broken software or bad configurations, is violating the
explicit copying restriction just placed upon the article by the distributions
mechanism.

People complain about broken distributions.  I'm sure that if a poster was to
go to court over broken distributions causing a violation of copyright
that the judge would frown upon sysadmins causing the violations by not
properly configuring their software.  Note that I, being the only user on
my system and being a leaf node, don't have the problem.

In this case, where the poster explicitly states that the distribution is to
be confined to a specific area (local, slo, usa, etc), the liability for
a copyright infringement rests with the admin at the site who simply passes ALL
or ignores distributions entirely.

Now, before the arguments about "if you post, you MEAN to lose your copyright
protections" comes around, most of the time, if a poster puts an explicit
distribution line in the article, he/she is explicitly reserving the right
of distribution to him/herself--thus, the argument above is bogus.

If there is no specific distribution line, the implied distribution is whatever
the newsgroup's default distribution is set to.  So, if a poster does not put
a distribution line in an article, and the newsgroup has a default distribution
of slo, then any posting outside of distribution slo could be construed as a
copyright violation.  

OTOH, if the poster explicitly puts world as the distribution, or if the 
newsgroup's default distribution is world, there can be no misunderstanding: 
ANY distribution as part of Usenet is explicitly granted.  This would, IMO,
include CD-ROM.

Now, a feature I would be interested in seeing is the ability, in the 
distribution line, to exclude/include specific machines.  Thus, I could write
(for lack of a better syntax)

distribution: slo, @homecare.com, !@psych.fido.org

This would, of course, route the article to homecare.com, prevent routing to
psych.fido.org, and route to the whole slo area.

WHY!!!????!!! you may ask, and with reason.  Simply this: if a poster did not
want a certain machine (such as lorc.UUCP; MINE!) to see an article, then they
would have the capability.  OTOH, there could be times when just the opposite
would be needed, where you might have a friend on homecare.com, an enemy on
psych.fido.org, and be talking about San Luis-Obispo politics....

How could this be implemented?  Simple.  Upon article batching, check the
distribution line.  Perform normal distribution processing to determine
whether it gets batched to a site or not (the !@ syntax) and exclude the
article from the batch if so.  If a specific inclusion is made, use e-mail
to send it to the other machine using a special username (maybe news-in).
Note that this would be a sender-processed section of the distribution
line, as opposed to the way "normal" distributions are processed.

Now, in order to make it work, admins are going to have to fix their sys
files... (ARGGGHHHHH!!!!!) I realize that this is not something that admins
prefer to do, but, nonetheless, it would be a good idea--if only to protect
the site from a copyright suit based upon the broken distribution scenario
mentioned above.  Cooperation from the software authors of course would be
required to implement any new features... Unless each and every site admin
wants to "roll-their-own".

Note that excluding a site would be easy to implement because only one end is 
affected.  However, everyone would have to implement in order to secure it
net.wide--and to allow the inclusion mechanism.

This idea may seem hare-brained (no spelling flames--that is the CORRECT
spelling...), which it does even to me, but I'm sure there are lots of
users out there who have wished for just such a mechanism.  And, Usenet does
stand for USErs' NETwork.....

How many times have you ever mentioned k*bo in a message, and really didn't
want to get a k*bo cookie back?  Simple, then.  Under the above system, you
could write distribution: !@world.std.com and k*bo probably wouldn't
see it.  Don't want a mutlu after you?  Exclude his site from your article's
distribution.  BTW: this is not censorship by any stretch of the imagination:
if the mechanism was available, then the poster has every right to prevent
a machine from receiving the post. Somebody mail-bombing because of your 
post's content?  Next time, exclude his site.

Of course, the bad side would be people talking behind other people's backs..
Such as people talking about me in unflattering terms with a distribution of
!@lorc.UUCP (which, due to my accounts on other systems wouldn't stop me
if I knew a talk-behind-my-back-was occuring).  However, it's like a 
screwdriver:  A screwdriver is a tool, one use of which is to drive screws.
I have heard of people getting stabbed with screwdrivers, too, but does that
mean that screwdrivers are evil objects and should be banned??

Whether this would be healthy or not is an altogether different ballgame....

It all boils down to one issue: which is more important, the poster's right
to restrict an article's distribution, or the reader's right to read any and
all articles?
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: alt.culture.usenet,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing,news.admin