🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov10.055540.505@dsd.es.com>, rthomson@mesa.dsd.es.com (Rich Thomson) writes:
> In article <josh.721329561@mowgli>
> 	josh@cqs.washington.edu (Josh Hayes) writes:
>>2) Much or all of the material distributed in the group is copyright
>>material, distributed without permission of the author.
> 
> However, Playboy is taking its copyright very seriously with respect
> to digitizing and has begun suing pay BBS services (most notably
> "Event Horizons BBS") that scan in Playboy's pictures and make them
> available for downloading under a pay-membership scam.  I think the
> copyright holders are much more likely to go after setups like this
> first than after usenet.

Why is a pay-membership a scam?  Do you just mean that this BBS
is on very shakey ground because of its use of copyrighted materials?
Or is the word a misspelling of `scheme'?  If you mean that all pay
membership setups are `scams' then I would very much disagree with you.

As for the original topic, given the current laws in the US it's
probably only a matter of time until one site or another on the
alt.net gets into some trouble over copyrighted or `pornographic'
material, especially if the sysadmin doesn't make any effort at all
to remove such questionable material.  (Which doesn't necessarily
mean a major effort to screen the material, just keeping an eye out
and removing articles that claim to be from copyrighted sources or
that are identified as questionable -- say in discussions such as
this one -- would probably be sufficient to prevent prosecution.
Ignoring the potential for problems would likely _not_ be sufficient).

It doesn't affect us very much directly, we don't carry any of the
alt.groups;  even apart from issues like this, there's just too much
traffic and too little of it useful.

I'd be concerned though whether any publicity on problems like this
in the alt.net might spill over into the usenet generally -- we can
say all we want to that the alt.net isn't part of usenet, but the
fact is that they are often carried together and in the minds of
many (_ESPECIALLY IN THE MEDIA_), the distinction will be lost.  The
chances are that this will all blow over without any untoward
consequences, but there is the possibility (either now or in the
future) for some very bad karma for the usenet in general or for
one or more sites in particular.

Bruce C. Wright