From: kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Let's get nonprofit info on-line
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 23:13:10 GMT

I want more material on-line. I want briefing papers from the ACLU. I
want information about how to contact government officials from the
League of Women Voters. I want informatation about the American Family
Association's efforts to suppress TV shows from the AFA and from
People for the American Way.

If you belong to, or know of, an organization that has information you
would like to see on-line, here is a sample suggestion letter you can
send them.

(Please distribute this article to others who might be motivated to
send letters. I've sent letters to the ACLU, LoWV, and PAW, but more
wouldn't hurt. For information about the American Library Association
material mentioned in the letter, send email to
archive-server@eff.org. Include the line:
  send library-policies README
 )

=================================================================
                                                    April 8, 1992
                                  [Your address and phone number]

[Org Name] Publications Department
[Org Address]

Dear Sir or Madam:

I write with a suggestion that could make [Org Name] material more
widely available at less cost to the public and to the [Org Name].

The suggestion has three parts. Implementation of all three parts is
not necessary. Implementation of even one part would help immensely.

1) Explicitly allow (at least some) material to be copied without
prior permission. You may wish to require that material be copied only
in its entirety and that the [Org Name] name and conditions for coping
be retained. Here are some sample statements:

      Copyright 1992 [author's name]
      Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
      guide provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
      preserved on all copies.

      Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
      booklet under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
      entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
      permission notice identical to this one.

      Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this
      booklet into another language, under the above conditions for modified
      versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a
      translation approved by the author.

2) Make electronic versions of (at least some) material available to a
few people such as me who will distribute at their own expense it via
computer bulletin board and networks. The infrastructure to do this is
already in place connecting most major computer networks. It is used
every day to distribute thousands of copies of freely-copiable
computer software and public domain texts (such as Alice in
Wonderland).

3) Make electronic versions of (at least some) material available
through the publications department. Or, make electronic versions
available on-line through a [Org Name] computer bulletin board.

The Office of Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association
has already tested some of these ideas. Electronic distribution of
their material on the Internet is a great success. Tens of thousands
of people have received their material with a per-copy distribution
cost of virtually zero.

If you have any questions, please call, write, or send electronic mail
to [your email address].

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

cc: [Name of organziation president or "Office of the President"]

--
Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign