[2316] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
"Retail" reselling and intellectual property
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael S. Maiten)
Fri Feb 7 12:27:06 1992
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 92 09:16:36 PST
To: walney!jpr@uu.psi.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
From: Michael S. Maiten <msm@Energetic.COM>
In-Reply-To: Jim Rutt's message of Thu, 6 Feb 92 11:28:16 EST <9202061628.AA25079@walney.com>
> Date: Thu, 6 Feb 92 11:28:16 EST
> From: walney!jpr@uu.psi.com (Jim Rutt)
>
>
>
> I'm curious about intellectual property issues that are raised
> by the rise of sellers of "retail" access to the net and it's contents.
> Say World, Portal, The WELL, and PSI?
>
> Are there copyright issues involved in "selling" access to
> usenet, archives, and mailing lists? If a service provider is charging $x/hr
> for people to read my postings, that originate off of said
> service, does that service owe me a royalty?
>
> What about folks that post disclaimers on messages proclaiming
> the contents free to pass on but NOT for Resale? I've seen a few of these.
> Do such disclaimers have any real standing?
>
> One of the difficult issues it seems to me of commercialization
> will be sorting out what effect the rules and attitudes of "the money
> culture" will have on what has until now been a non-money "gift economy".
>
> Other thoughts along these lines?
> -------------------------------------------
> Jim Rutt - JPR Ventures - 4124 Walney Rd Suite N - Chantilly, VA 22021
> Voice: 703 631 2638 FAX: 703 631 2656
> E-Mail: jpr@walney.com or jimrutt@well.sf.ca.us
>
>
>
What these sellers are doing is providing, for a fee, access to the
network; they are not selling the contents of any place on the
network.
The fees that are charged cover the expenses and profit in the
equipment acquisition, operation, and management. What the customer
does with that access depends on arrangements that the customer has
with other sites.
Remember that there is considerable expense in network
connections (leased lines, routers, contrigution to the network
operations center, etc) and in computer systems (disk space, system
administration, etc); this is passed on (with profit) to the users of
the particular service.
If you put something up for anonymous FTP or post a message to a
mailing list or newsgroup, you are implicitly giving it world-wide
distribution by whatever means. For example, if some mailing list
messages are printed and delivered by Company A's truck to someone
(who pays for that service), Company A doesn't owe any royalties, they
are just a delivery service. The same can be said for network
connection services; they just make it possible to deliver the bits.
Just some thoughts on the subject...
<MSM>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael S. Maiten Internet: msm@energetic.com
Energetic Systems UUCP: ensys!msm
Telephone: +1 415 967-5538 (...!sun!bridge2!ensys!msm)
