🚀 go-pugleaf

I have before me the application forms for joining the British Unix user
group and the British branch of Usenet; I understand that similarly
worded forms are used throughout the EUnet.

In the UKUUG form I read "all the material received from the UKUUG, the
EUUG, or any other national group of the EUUG shall be used solely by me
(or other persons at my institution if this is an institutional
membership). No material, in whatever form, shall be passed to anyone
not covered by my membership of the UKUUG without prior written consent
from the UKUUG." (this followed by the usual verbiage that forbids
public criticism of the organization, which verbiage is very common in
this country).

In the UKNET form I read "Before a new site is added to the network UKC
must check the uniqueness of the name in a world context and a copy of
this form, signed by the news site, must be with us" and "Your
organisation must agree to disconnet any site from the network if
requested to do so by staff at UKC".

The ostensible reason is to allow the UKC gateway to recoup their costs
and for the UKNET and UKUUG to share the costs of running themselves
among the largest possible number of members, by disallowing members to
redistribute to non members (in other words UKNET is a not-for-profit
Clarinet).

The consequence is to forbid any redistribution of GNU materials
received from the UKUUG or via the UKNET news network. Free software?

Note that technically the entire UKNET is also in violation of the
copyright of all those news authors that allow copying of their articles
only if no restriction is imposed on their further circulation. I think
that the UKNET gateway should check and verify that no such articles,
especially those bearing a GNU copyright, pass thru it. Probably use of
Templeton's shareware filtering package would solve the problem.
--
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk