[9131] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Regarding Clarinet and copyright
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brad Templeton)
Sat Dec 18 16:11:03 1993
To: jds@mcnc.org, psi.com@looking.clarinet.com
In-Reply-To: <9312160102.AA02196@robin.mcnc.org>
Cc:
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 93 13:09:00 PST
From: Brad Templeton <brad@looking.clarinet.com>
I'm afraid your memory fails you. ClariNet never proposed such a thing.
It as an electronic newspaper composed entirely of material that we pay for,
drawn from outside the net.
At around the same time, Geoff Goodfellow proposed doing what you describe.
Geoff was not able to make that a success, but has gone on to good success
in mobile E-mail applications.
Frankly, though, a lot of people do get the two confused, because they came
out at the same time, and were the first two information businesses to
be proposed for USENET. (Carrier businesses, such as UUNET, predate this)
We get this association because In-Moderation-Network died, so ours is the
only name still in public view.
The time may actually come for a concept more along the lines that Geoff
was proposing, but if I were to do it (which for now I frankly doubt) I
would not do it quite the way he did. There are ways it could be done
that don't step on any toes. (For example, send sites on your subscriber
list a list of message-ids with the stamp of approval, and give them
software to that their USENET feed deletes all other messages.)
Nobody can question the right of a service to make or sell editorial
judgements on the quality of publicly posted articles. The right to do this
is one of the fundamental freedoms of the press.
