/*Editor's Note: This is an interesting history of Usenet from the perspective of someone who has been involved in the Usenet since near the beginning. */ Article 3941 of comp.org.eff.talk: Path: news.duke.edu!duke!wolves!news From: news@wolves.uucp (The Wolfe of the Den) Newsgroups: alt.culture.usenet,news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk,misc.legal.computing Subject: Net Culture assumptions! (very long!) Summary: a lesson from net.history Keywords: imminent death of net predicted : -) Message-ID: <1992Jul5.055924.24053@wolves.uucp> Date: 5 Jul 92 05:59:24 GMT References: <1992Jun30.062320.3968@clarinet.com> <1992Jun30.084434.801@nntp.hut.fi> <1992Jun30.195213.10801@clarinet.com> Reply-To: duke.cs.duke.edu!wolves!news Organization: Wolves Den UNIX Lines: 286 <1992Jun30.195213.10801@clarinet.com> brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes: > >However, my old logic still stands. USENET can't exist legally if you >think that the copying that goes on under it is generally with the permission >of the author, rather than at the command of the author. Hey, Brad, psst, USENET *doesn't* exist legally! We have been through this argument several times over, Usenet is not a legally defined entity. period. For the sake of netnews continuing to be a useful tool, *I* hope it never becomes one! Let me explain why I have this particular belief, it is based on a personal view of the net based on observing its history from its inception to the present time. First a caution, my time sense is a bit wierd, and the exact chronology is available from various sources, and the interpretation of the observed events is my own. I'll begin with Brad's theory of "copyright" in relation to netnews and proceed with a history lesson with explanations of my views on the topic. Brad's model: >How to draw the line? Quite simply, human beings violate copyrights. >Computers can't. So to violate a copyright, an action of a human being >is required. More to the point, the violation is far easier to discern if >the human being *knowingly* violated a copyright. Well, so far the courts seem to view the act of physical duplication the point at which the violation occurs. When someone lays a book or magazine on the imaging surface of a copy machine, they potientially violate the copyright of the item. Whether the act of copying falls under the "fair use" provisions depends on the subsequent use of the copy. If this particular concept is applied to the netnews cooperative network, then when an article is transmitted to another machine, a copy is made, and the potential violation occurs. If your model that the user "commanded" that that copy be made, on each and every copy that is made, no matter how many systems intervene between his finger on the "send" key and that copy, then the author may become liable for "unauthorized use" of some machine that is not even on the same continent they are on. It also becomes very difficult to define the amount of time that may elapse between the user commanding the copying, and the act of copying. On the other hand, a competing argument/model can be made that the author gives implied consent for the cooperating systems to make copies and distribute those copies, without giving up the other rights concerning control of their intellectual property. Again, there are problems in that there is no easy way to define the limits of that permission. Which of these models is "right?" Both and neither. Those who use Usenet, and wish to have some secure legal grasp on what they contribute fail to comprehend some basic aspects of netnews that have been inadequately stated since the net began in 1979/80. Recalling a bit of the history of the net, we need to look at the way that the net started and how it has grown. The seminal concept of the net is that folks on different machines *desire* to share information in an easy and timely manner, despite the spatial separation between them and the machines they are using. That is that the persons using the net to communicate *want to communicate* and are willing to cooperate in effecting that communication. This is the absolute basic principle: you want to communicate with the other folks on the net. There is no one holding a gun to your head telling you that you *must* post something to the net. (At least, I hope no one is doing that!) From this, everything else follows. The mechanics of how it happens have changed drastically from the original shell script implementation of simply checking the time stamps on files and sending files that had changed since the last check to some other machine. The first attempt was barely adequate for two machines, and required a lot of human effort to assure that directory structures between the machines was identical. As soon as one other machine was added to the mix, it became obvious that some sort of automated methods of assuring that the communication would not breakdown when someone wanted to start a new topic. Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis and Steve Bellovin, with assistance from lots of folks at Duke and UNC, convened an informal conference and hashed the basic facilites and needs out in about three hours. Then in about two weeks, they wrote it and got it working on the "original three" sites, duke (computer science), unc (computer science) and phs (dept of physiology, in the duke medical center). At that time, the "A version" of NetNews (as it was originally called) had been placed on the conference tape at the Toronto Usenix meeting in January of 1980. (? correct year) Under the conditions of the academic UNIX licenses in those days, the software was placed in the "public domain" and it was the most popular program from that Conference Tape. I do not recall that anyone was quite expecting the explosion that followed. The early ARPAnet already had a number of mailing lists, and the management of them was already quite a headache for the folks involved. The NetNews software was quickly recognized as a superior means of dealing with very active lists and was quickly placed into service. At that point, there were already problems with providing email service between the ARPAnet machines and the UUCP based network. The confusion between bangpath notation and the domain-name system was well established, with lots of rancor and confusion already evident. In any case, one of the early assumptions was that there would be "local" groups of machines sharing news, and that there would be little crossover between groups. The model was that a campus of a university would have a news network, and it might be shared with another university that was logically and physically close to it, but spatially inconvenient for folks to get together physically, and that netnews would allow them to share information in a timely manner. But again, there was a basic point to the model, that the people wanted to communicate, and would cooperate in effecting that communication. The sharing of information was to be handled in local/regional areas, and the details of who would pay for the phone calls, and the legal mumbo-jumbo of "responsibility" was to be handled with the usual academic handwaving and under color of academic freedom. When the direction of evolution took an unexpected turn, and a continental network emerged, spanning the continent from california to north carolina, and toronto to san diego, it was sort of a shock to realize what had happened. And, since everyone was in an academic environment (well, decvax was commercial, but it was a very special case - Bell Labs was academic really, but it was another special case) and involved in computer science, there was never any kind of special concern for the legal mumbo-jumbo. Everyone *wanted* to be on the net, and it was clear that they were cooperating in doing so. (Some folk at Bell Labs were watching the legal stuff, not in terms of individual posters' rights, but in terms of protecting AT&T's rights in and to UNIX source code and proprietary information.) The conventions of net., fa. and developed as being netwide, gated mailing lists, and local topic groups. And the hierarchical subcategories soon appeared. Moderated groups appeared and were placed in the mod.* hierarchy. Under the strain of being an international network, with several new machines being added daily, certain limitations in the basic assumptions made themselves painfully obvious. And the re-write known as B-news made room for the continuing expansion. And still, folks *wanted to communicate* and cooperated in doing so. An informal structure for the efficient management of the topology of the network arose, based around a set of sites willing to transfer news over a set of "backbone" links, and then fan out distributions to the mid-level and leaf sites. The administrators of these backbone sites knew each other, and respected each other in terms of cooperating and managing the growth of a net that had *no formal existence!* The "backbone cabal" (as it was mockingly referred to, in recognition of its extra-legal existence) established some general procedures for adding groups, and for dealing with problems that threatened the voluntary cooperative nature of the net. The debate over copyright of postings became, for the first time, truly acrimonious. As more sites joined, more and more of them being non-academic in nature, the missing or hidden assumptions that guided the folk attempting to manage the net, began to exert pressure. It *was* stated, plainly and clearly, in several places, that a person posted to the net as a voluntary act, and that they were assumed to understand that asserting copyright was not a "friendly" action IN THE LIGHT OF THIS ASSUMPTION. Meanwhile, AT&T was "liberated" by the MFJ ruling by Judge Green, in the US Justice Department's Anti-Trust suit against AT&T, to compete in the computer industry (with certain limitations). All at once, the whole nature of things changed, the Universities were no longer bound by the license restrictions that programs and utilities developed on the "free license" Unix brand Operating System be placed in the public domain, and the net continued to grow by leaps and bounds. The power of the backbone cabal held through the time of the Great Renaming, when the old net.*, fa.* and mod.* was transformed overnight into the "Seven sisters" of {comp,misc,news,rec,sci,soc, and talk}, plus a smattering of local hierarchies. And more sites became connected to the net. Still under the assumption that the sites wanted to communicate, and would cooperate in doing so. It was noted that postings were voluntary, and that the backbone considered all postings to be essentially placed in the public domain. But now, this discussion was being held in news.admin, not out in net.general or net.admin where all would see it, and all were, in fact, encouraged to read and comment. And most net.readers were simply no longer directly involved in the guidance and development of the net. Partly to remedy this lack of direct involvement, but more as a result of the dissolution of the backbone cabal (which happened when a vocal group of folks established the alt.* hierarchy because the backbone folk had decided that there would *not* be a rec.sex group - several of the backbone admins threw up their hands and recognized that the anarchy was no longer under control) the "Guidelines" were worked out that provided for a popularity poll (a "vote") for the establishment of new newsgroups. And the net continued to grow, but now sites coming into the net were no longer really reminded of the basic assumptions before coming on line, that they were joining a voluntary association, and that people posting were assumed to be communicating in public because they wanted to, and that it was a "public domain" situation. There was no backbone cabal to contact the new site admin and assure the net that the new site understood the voluntary nature of the association. Home sites and commercial sites began to proliferate in much greater numbers than before, and anyone could get a feed of as much or as little of the news as they wanted, and it was no longer assured that all sites *would* see an item posted to news.announce.important. The net has lost sight of its basic nature, a voluntary association of sites exchanging news in a standard format *under the assumption* that the site and its users want to communicate, and will cooperate in doing so. The net is acknowledged as a working anarchy. There is no authority beyond the administrator of a single machine, and links between machines are still (by and large) informal arrangements. The adding of commercial providers merely makes the model very murky, since the feeding of a group TO the commercial providers are still generally informal arrangements. (Or has this changed? Does any one have a contract with uunet that obligates them to feed to uunet news that does not originate at the site? Does uunet require a formal contract before making arrangements to feed news into its nntp port without a matching reverse channel?) So what is the point of this overly long history lesson? When netnews began, it was clearly a situation where items were donated to the net freely and voluntarily. The resolution of an early debate on the appearance of a copyright notice on a posting was the clearly stated principle that posting on the net was contributing the item to the public domain (in some sense, the moral rights were *not* at issue then, before the US joined the Berne Copyright Convention.) Postings with a copyright did not make it very far before someone noticed and corrected the misapprehensions of the poster. Today, this assumption is forgotten, folk forget that they are in a voluntary situation (if they were ever informed of it) and that this was started as a public domain forum. In My Opinion, folks posting an item to the net are doing so *voluntarily* and they mean to have that item distributed anywhere "the net" may send it. I consider it a feckless argument to try and maintain a distinction between whether that distribution takes place automatically or with human direction or control. It is known (or should be known) before posting that the automatic systems are going to send it to places that the poster has absolutely no control over, either in terms of space, or in terms of time. They intend to have that item seen and read by other humans on the other end of the virtual circuit. And they implicitly invite that other human to react to that item. Being a "nominally reasonable" person, with due regard for the moral rights of an author to be known as the author of a particular work, I will maintain attributions on the items. But they have also granted automatic systems the right to send that item to me without compensation (or even a [imo] reasonable expectation of compensation,) that is, it is a gift. Finally, in my opinion, if they do *not* want me to receive the item, then they should not post it "on the net." And a prediction: Someday, someone who does not understand the *voluntary* nature of the net, is going to actually sue someone for some misunderstanding. I would sure enjoy being called as an "expert witness" for that trial (if it ever gets to trial.) -- 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"