[9474] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Inmac, junk mail, and the death of the net.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Sommerfeld)
Thu Jan 6 17:47:10 1994
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 17:45:04 -0500
From: Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@apollo.hp.com>
To: crocker@tis.com, spike@coke.std.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
It occurs to me that an appropriate semi-technical solution to this
problem is to have finger or fingerd put a copyright notice in its
output barring redistribution or resale of the information.
This allows the "normal" uses of finger (such as a phone directory
substitute, or to find if your friend is logged in prior to initiating
a "talk" link), but prohibits the kind of abuses folks here are
complaining about.
If you also borrow a trick from the mailing list vendors, and embed
dummy names in the finger output to catch "cheaters", this might work
fairly well...
- Bill
