No its not. Walnut Creek posted the offer to the net and are willing to
give you a $39.95 value for your efforts. Most do not do anywhere near
that much.
> > Now what can we do as FAQ authors to make it easier
> > for us to get the Information Service Providers to assist in allowing
> > you meet your 4 points ?
>
> Wait a minute. There is a question that needs to be asked that hasn't
> been. *Should* we make changes to our document, which most of us do
> on our own time, to make it easier for someone to make money off it?
> I think one could stronly argue that we shouldn't have to. We already
> *all* spend a lot of time to make it easy for others to get information.
> Haven't we already done our jobs?
Adding a consistent header will make it easier for all to see what the
distribution requirements are. And what do you mean "done our jobs" ?
FAQs were written to cutdown the noise in newsgroups. Authors may feel
motivated to do them to assist the readers of a specific newsgroup or set of
newsgroups. They may also want to get their name out to the world and this
is a convenient method to do so. No one requires you to maintain your FAQs.
If you feel that it is a "job" it's time to take a break...
> > First, the ISP must be able to quickly get
> > any to Permission/Copyright statements out of the articles.
>
> grep [Cc]opyright faq.faq
>
> Quick, easy, portable, covers 90+% cases right now.
As I did yesterday, I just looked and it produced 1200+ lines of junk that was
really hard to read and nearly impossible to determine what the distribution
requirement were.
> > In looking at
> > the archive of news.answers I have here I do not see a standard way in
> > which people put a copyright statement in their FAQs.
>
> Should we? How will we let all the FAQ maintainers know and get them
> to comply? What about those FAQ's that aren't posted to *.answers?
> What should the ISP do when it runs across one of these.
Good questions. It seems that many of you wish to add restrictions and
distribution limitations to your FAQs. I'm not sure the reason but it seems
that there are enough of you to warrant action. Standardizing access to
these condition would be good for all sites not just CD-ROM producers.
I will gladly send a form message to all FAQ authors/maintainers that are
listed in the news.answers archives. I can't *force* compliance but since
most of us are trying to do it right I'd hope they would. Since this list
is for news.answers and FAQ maintainers that is all that I can hope to target
at present. When the format is in use I suspect that some of those
non-news.answer FAQ authors will see the format and clone it for their
posting. Especially if there is network software that supports it.
(Long stretch, I agree.)
> > Why am I trying to make it easier for them ? Cause if its hard or costly
> > they will not do it and we will be having this discussion yet again.
>
> I contend that the burden of responsibility rests entirely on them.
> If each FAQ maintainer wants to make this extra information available,
> cool, but each ISP has *no* *right* to even *ask* this of a FAQ
> maintainer.
I am not an ISP. I am a moderator and FAQ maintainer who is trying to improve
the process. (There are not rights on USENET, only privileges.)
> I shouldn't have to post explicit rules in my neighborhood to prevent
> people from having loud parties at 2:00 AM. "You should have posted
> a sign that was easy for us to find and read" is not an adequate
> excuse for a lack of common decency. This is a wild analogy, but
> the concept is still valid.
Covenants exist when you purchase a home that are written down quite plainly.
There are general rules for renters when you rent most buildings.
> > ISP Procedures:
>
> I have a new set.
>
> If you're going to publish this information for money, either get the
> author(s)'s permission or make sure that there is no redistribution
> restriction in the document. If you don't like this, don't play.
So UUNET, AOL, the Well, NetNews/CD will not have to notify you that they
are making money off your FAQ since they are not publishers....
> If we choose more elaborate ISP procedures, how do we get them in
> the ISP's hands?
I will send a copy to the ISP's that are listed in the cdrom-faq and with
the nets help can probably locate others to send it to.
> If an ISP can't even be bothered to check the copyright inside a
> document or contact the author, what would make one think that they'd
> search a header for this information?
Time is money. If you can review 100 faq restrictions in the time it would
take to do 1 wouldn't you think that there was a better chance of getting it
done ? Especially if in the Procedures letter the rath of the net was
discussed and described ?
> > -----
> > FAQ Maintainer Procedures:
>
> Continue to spend your own time to make the best document you can.
Oops. forgot that one.. ;-)
> I understand and applaud what you're trying to do, but I don't want to
> coddle someone who is behaving, IMHO, reprehensibly. I'm not all that
> interested in inconveniencing myself to help someone with no scruples
> (IMHO, again) make money on my labor. Period.
The reason that some are "mis-behaving" is that it is too hard to to it right.
I am not saying that is right or wrong, just stating a fact. The net is growing
rapidly, exploding is more like it. I am trying to improve the techniques to
access and redistribute FAQs. Since the real explosion is just beginning it
is a good time to head this problem off. I am sure that the ISPs would like
to do it right. You are a part of their market. If you bad mouth their
products and services you are not helping them out. They would rather do it
by your rules and make you happy as long as it makes good business sense.
Walnut Creek is one of the top two finest CD-ROM distributers in my mind.
They have helped lead the way. I am just trying, as an FAQ maintainer, to
help lead them in the right direction so that the two of us (WC/ISPs and the
FAQ community) can work together peacefully.
> Like just about everyone else, if I were asked (and my FAQ were mature
> to my satisfaction) I'd probably tell them to go ahead and take it,
> with proper disclaimers and attribution, but I do not want to be
> surprised when my work shows up somewhere unexpected, that's all.
That is exactly it Nick. By standardizing and documenting the process for
the ISP they are much more likely to do it right and you won't be suprised.
And you might get some free product at the same time.
-Kent+
-- Kent Landfield INTERNET: kent_landfield@sterling.com Sterling Software UUCP: uunet!kent || sparky!kent Phone: (402) 291-8300 FAX: (402) 291-4362 Please send comp.sources.misc-related mail to kent@uunet.uu.net.
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