From: mathew <mathew@mantis.co.uk>
Newsgroups: news.admin,alt.culture.usenet
Subject: Machines vs People (and other quibbling)
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 92 12:11:46 BST
Distribution: world
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.

news@wolves.uucp (The Wolfe of the Den, G Wolfe Woodbury) writes:
> In article <m7ZoNB16w165w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) writes:
> >ggw@duke.cs.duke.edu (Gregory G. Woodbury) writes:
> >> He believes that he is commanding each of those machines to do the
> >> distribution of his item, in any case, he *has* granted his permission for
> >> each hardware/software copying device (computer) to perform that copying.
> >
> >You don't grant permissions to inanimate objects.  I don't grant my computer
> >permission to copy a disk; *I* copy the disk, *using* the computer.
> 
> 	The point is well taken, but is really just quibbling about the
> copying agent.

Most legalities are "just quibbling".

> >In this case, *Brad* copies his article, using *your* computer.  By hooking
> >up your machine to Usenet, you have decided to make some of its facilities
> >available to other people indiscriminately.
> 
> 	Yes, I have contributed some of my resources to the propagation
> of netnews.  And by extension, I have implicitly granted some number of
> persons permission to send information via my machine.  BUT, it is not
> an indiscriminate grant.  I have a file that says that certain groups of
> articles may be passed (e.g. the C-news "sys" file) and there are
> various other files that affect the passage of items through my machine.

Yes, yes.  I said "other people indiscriminately" -- that is, there is no
control on *who* may use the resources you have dedicated to the propagation
of netnews.

> 	This is also the other part of my point.  By hooking up to
> Usenet, I grant permission to other persons to have their machines
> perform store-and-forward operations on articles I submit to the
> distributed system.

Say what?  I didn't agree to anything like that when I connected this machine
to Usenet.

Rather, by connecting this machine to Usenet I was able to make use of
copying facilities granted to me by thousands of other Usenet sites, so that
when I post an article I can copy it across the world using thousands of
machines linked to a network.

I certainly didn't grant other *people* permission to perform
store-and-forward operations on my articles.  I don't need to do so to have
Usenet propogation of my articles; all I need is to be able to use other
people's *machines* to copy my articles.

>                I also realize that some of those folks may choose
> to make personal copies of the articles by storing them in their
> personal directories andor printing them on paper.  I like the concept
> that someone may find something I say worth keeping around and refering
> to again at some point in the future.

Me too.  I tend to consider such use of anything I write as "reasonable use".
Similarly, if I (say) produced a radio show, I'd like the idea that people
taped my show to listen to again or lend to friends.

Generally, if people want to distribute my articles for free, I'm happy for
them to do so so long as my name's left on the article.

If they want to distribute my articles for profit, again I'd like to be
credited, and I'd quite like a copy of whatever publication it is that has my
article put in it, but other than that I really don't care.

> 	Furthermore, there is nothing to prevent me from taking my own
> words, released to Usenet, and creating a compilation of them and
> publishing that in the commercial market.  But I wouldn't even consider
> taking someone else's articles and doing so without obtaining their
> permission.

Absolutely.

> >> Brad, if you did not mean to give me or anyone else permission to read this
> >> item, or to have the machines (which we may control) propagate it to other
> >> machines for other folks to read, why did you *post* it?
> >
> >To get it copied and propogated by the purely automatic copying systems which
> >exist.  Perhaps via some manual transportation systems (people carrying tapes
> >around).
> 
> 	Yep, he has used my machine to do his copying, and given me
> permission to do that copying.

Sorry, I don't think he's done the latter.  If I use the office photocopier
(with permission) to copy something I've written, does that mean I've given
the owner of the photocopier permission to do similar copying of whatever it
was I wrote?  Not at all.

Your computer is a machine.  You've made it available to me, like a
photocopier, so I can use it to do some copying.  In this case, copying this
article.  Thanks to the power of telecommunications, I can cause thousands of
machines to do some copying for me.  And hence ensure that each machine has a
copy of this article sitting there waiting for someone to read it.

If I have your permission to use your photocopier or computer, I think I can
just use it.  I don't think I have to get you to do the copying for me, and I
don't think I have to give you permission to copy my stuff.

>                                                             This is a
> counter-argument that if he is performing the copying, that he is making
> an unauthorized use of my machine.  This is much more of a concern in
> most places.  It is one thing to work with a situation where the author
> of the item has granted you the implied permission to copy and
> distribute a posted article,  it is quite a different thing to give up
> some portion of the control of a machine to any person who can get an
> account with access to Usenet.  

Well, whether people realise it or not, they have "given up some portion of
the control of a machine" by setting it up for Usenet.  If nothing else,
they've given anyone on the net the ability to create and delete files on
that machine, possibly even to the detriment of any other use the machine
might be put to.  (Specifically, the volume of news might fill your disks.)

As to whether such use is "authorized", that's a tricky one.  I'd say it is. 
After all, you made a deliberate effort to allow it to happen.

> There are two models of Usenet floating around here, and they are in 
> direct conflict with each other:
> 
> 1) I control my machine with absolute right to determine who uses the
> 	machine and what information passes throught it.

I'm afraid I don't think that attitude is really compatible with Usenet.  I
don't see any way you can control what information passes through your
machine when it's connected to Usenet.  You can delete information you don't
like once it's arrived, but you can't really control what arrives.

We (Mantis) are in the UK, so we have to obey the Data Protection Act.  We
explained to the Data Protection Registrar's office what Usenet was and how
it worked, and they just boggled.

"You mean there might be any sort of information at all, relating to possibly
anyone in any country in the world, and that it might be in the database for
an unknown period of time?  You mean that everyone in the world with access
to a suitable computer has permission to add and delete information from the
database?"

It certainly looked interesting on their forms.  But they were very keen that
Usenet should be DPA-registered once we described how I could (say) find out
the telephone number of Ken Johnson at the AI Applications Institute, just
using our news spool and grep.

> 2) I have commanded machines all through the net to make copies of my
> 	articles and send them to other machines.  (With implications
> 	that other machine owners have yeilded me some control of their
> 	machines, and a dissonant implication that I have caused a
> 	machine not under my control to perform a duplication action.)

But the machine is under your control, to a limited extent.  That's what
being hooked up to Usenet means.  I could cause your machine to make copies
of (say) the Maastrict Treaty if I wanted to.

> >Nonsense.  The net can continue perfectly happily if only automatic copying
> >occurs.  Even the fabled "feed on tape with human intervention to perform the
> >distribution" is still possible; copies of the articles are automatically
> >generated as news batches.  You just move the automatically-generated batches
> >onto the tape, you don't duplicate them manually.
> 
> 	By your own argument in the beginning of this article, there is
> no "automatic" copying.

No, I mean "automatic" in the sense of "not involving the volition of the
owner of the computer".  Usenet copying is manual in the sense that it
involves the volition of exactly one person, the poster.

As I explain above, the *transport* of copies may involve humans other than
the poster.  Be the copying itself need not.

>                        The machines don't do it without being an agent
> of their owner/user.

Is a machine an agent of its owner in any legal sense?  I don't know, as I'm
not sure what you mean by "an agent of".

> >In fact, I don't think Brad is even trying for that strict a definition of
> >what is allowed.  I think he would say that copying entire batches is OK, but
> >selecting individual articles is not.
> 
> 	Well, what about moderated groups?

The poster has implicitly given the moderator permission to cause Usenet
distribution of the article by posting to the moderated group.  Just like I
implicitly give the editor of a newspaper permission to print my letter
by sending it to him, unless I mark it "not for publication" or similar.

>                                      What about the process of
> making batches.

Well, I don't know about you, but I don't do that manually except on special
occasions when *my own* articles get lost through some technical screw-up and
I re-batch them.  If the sites I feed start demanding more reliability of
feeding, I'll maybe have to re-think that policy.

>                 Are you saying that I have to have my machine pass on
> every batch it receives intact?

No.  The poster "expects" your machine to treat his article in a batch of
news the same way your machine treats every other article.  That may involve
filtering by newsgroup, by distribution, whatever.

>                                 The process of providing subset feeds
> to a downstream site involves selecting individual articles out of the
> incoming full-feed batches.

Yes, but it's done automatically.

I can tell where you're heading, though.  You're about to ask "What if I set
up an automatic program which runs as part of the unbatching, which selects
all articles by Roger Carasso and copies them automatically, dispatching them
to the CD plant for mastering on 'CARASSO's Greatest Hits Vol. 1'?"

Well, there are several answers to that.

Firstly, you're mad :-)

Secondly, you'll have a job doing it.  CARASSO changes login names and site
names fairly frequently.

Thirdly, the law's "reasonable man" provisions may apply.  The court may
decide that if you've set up some special piece of software to allow you to
copy something automatically which you ordinarily would not be allowed to
copy legally, you've *still* broken the law.  For example, if I set up thirty
videos to record "Star Wars" next time it's shown, do I now have thirty legal
copies I can resell, give to other people or otherwise redistribute?

> interpretation of what you have said.  Are you going to tell me
> that I have no right to email an item of special interest (e.g. the
> announcement of a file for FTP somewhere) to myself on another machine
> so that I can fetch that file at a more convenient time?

I suspect that that's "fair use", just as recording a TV program to watch at
a more convenient time is "fair use".

> >Choosing to copy a particular article from a newsgroup is not OK, because the
> >author might not want it copied by other people.  He doesn't need to have
> >other people copy it in order to get it distributed by Usenet.  *He* copies
> >it across Usenet, with the aid of other people's computers.
> 
> 	If the author doesn't want it copied, then it shouldn't be
> deliberatly sent out into an uncontrolled system where it will occur.

You aren't an uncontrolled system.  You are (I assume) a human being, with
free will and volition.

Certainly, any copying done by the "uncontrolled system" (your computer
operating automatically without human intervention) is probably tough luck as
far as the poster goes.  He's the one who's causing it to happen, after all.

But copying done/caused by *you* is a different matter.

> This is what is "reasonable" to expect.  I, being of sound mind and
> body, and certifiably "sane", reasonably expect that items I post to
> Usenet will be read by other folks, and that those folks will make
> copies of those items I post.  

"Fair use" copies, yes.  TV broadcasters also expect people to make copies of
programmes they show.  But that doesn't mean people can make as many copies
as they like, do whatever they like with them, and so on.  The law is set up
to deal with "reasonable" copying, it's not the problem you seem to be
portraying it as.

> Very few of the folks speaking here are saying that there is *not* a
> copyright.

It was certainly a non-zero number last time the debate flared up.

> The problem, as always, comes in what a resonable person, with the
> knowledge of what is going to happen when an item is released into the
> netnews process, expects to happen to that posting.

Well, personally what I expect to happen to this posting is that it will be
treated much the same as every other posting in news.admin.  I think that's
entirely "reasonable".  Plucking out this specific posting for further
duplication without permission would therefore not be what the reasonable man
expected, I think, unless it was done via quotation for the purposes of
continuing the discussion.

> Very few folks here are so unethical as to not acknowledge the "moral
> rights" of the author to be identified as the origin of the item.

Just as well, as under UK law one has to put an explicit message saying "The
author claims the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988" if one wants to claim the
moral right of paternity.  Imagine how much bandwidth *that* would waste on
every article.

> When I quote large swaths of an item, so that I can prepare a detailed
> and point-by-point discussion of an issue, I certainly think of it as
> "fair use" (in several senses of the word fair.)

It's certainly what the "reasonable man" expects when he posts to Usenet, as
it's general practice.

>                                                   Is it unreasonable to
> expect that someone pondering a question posed by a posting, who wants
> to read, reflect, andor research the question, may print a paper copy of
> the item before returning to the console to compose an answer?

That's not unreasonable at all, as I've said several times.

>                                                               Will you
> prevent this sort of considered and thoughtful process in you quest to
> make Usenet "useful" and "worthwhile?"   Your model's restrictions seem
> more of an inhibition to considered response, or even any response, than
> an inducement to a reasoned and thoughtful response.

You keep bringing up these examples of reasonable things to do, all of which
(it seems to me) are covered by "fair use" considerations in copyright law.

Look, it really isn't a problem.  Copyright law isn't some evil monster
that's going to prevent you printing a copy of my article for personal use so
you can take it home to think about (that'll be the day!) or show it to a
friend.

> There are certainly major problems with some of the ill-considered
> copyright notices that are floating around (such as the one forbiding
> distribution to "pay for read" systems), and it is my opinion that most
> of the copyright notices that appear in various places on the net are
> more of a reminder that the situation is **not** firmly decided in one
> way or the other.

Agreed.  I'm not very keen on disclaimers, either.


mathew
[ "You're being reasonable.  Stop it at once." ]
-- 
This disclaimer does not represent the views of Mantis Consultants Ltd

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