🚀 go-pugleaf

+-- In article <PCG.90Aug3150143@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk> pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
>  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.

   [ Description of UKUUG and UKNET conditions deleted ]

>  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).

"Ostensible" is a very loaded word - it implies you think there is another
reason - what?

As far as the UKNET forms are concerned, I can assure you that when we
first drafted them (1983) they were designed to make sure that everybody
who got news/mail through UKC paid their fair share of the transatlantic
costs, and that UKC did not end up subsidising other sites on UKNET.

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

There is nothing in the paragraphs you post to actually support this.
Although you have to be a UKUUG member to be part of UKNET, I do not
see a claim anywhere that material received via UKNET is supplied to
you by the UKUUG (or EUUG). (I don't remember seeing any similar claim
on the forms either - but it is a couple of years since I last looked at them.)

(By the way - I admit I have taken GNU materials received via UKNET,
and have passed them onto people not in the UKUUG. Do I hear the UKUUG
mafia rushing to point out the errors of my ways? :-) )

>  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.

This is an old argument that I don't think ever got resolved when it was
last debated. Unfortunately, most of the people who use those copyrights
are from the US where news feeds are free/cheap. Although they might solve
a problem in the US (i.e. somebody making commercial gain from an article),
they do not address the problem of sites like the European backbones (not
just ukc) that must pass on some of the costs of receiving the article.
 

>  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
--
Mike Bayliss

Chorus systemes, 
6 avenue Gustave Eiffel, 78182, St-Quentin-en-Yvelines-Cedex, France
Tel: +33 (1) 30 57 00 22 Fax: +33 (1) 30 57 00 66 	E-mail: mike@chorus.fr
....
My other .signature was confiscated by French customs...