[9478] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Inmac, junk mail, and the death of the net.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen D Crocker)
Thu Jan 6 17:59:53 1994
To: Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@apollo.hp.com>
Cc: spike@coke.std.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 06 Jan 94 17:45:04 EST."
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 94 17:56:58 -0500
From: Stephen D Crocker <crocker@tis.com>
This was, indeed, the scheme I had in mind...
> From: Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@apollo.hp.com>
> To: crocker@tis.com, spike@coke.std.com
> cc: com-priv@psi.com
> Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 17:45:04 -0500
> Subject: Re: Inmac, junk mail, and the death of the net.
>
> 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...
Yup. And it's possible to strengthen this a bit by crafting a
standard clause which is used by lots of sites and then organizing
some group of lawyers to go after violators. Or, perhaps it might
occur in reverse: Some group of lawyers can offer a standard clause to
its clients and then be ready to pursue violators.
Steve
