> While discussing about the FAQ Copyright with a person who carges
> people for net access, he proposed the following:
> what about a X-Copyright header, so that I can refuse messages
> with a specified Copyright?
While a techically valid idea, it could be very legally dangerous to
USENET sites. Let's say a "pay per view" site lets a "X-Copyright:
no-pay-per-view" message through because it's software is not set up for
it. It could be liable for some hefty legal problems. Also, what if the
user types "X-Copyright: Not to be distributed on pay per view sites"
instead of using the standardized identifier? Can they still sue the "pay
per view" site for letting the message through? Who is going to be the
keeper of the list of standard identifiers and how can we force people to
use them?
This is somewhat analagous to a site saying "comp.lang.c is rated PG and
will never have anything offensive in it" when they make newsgroups
available to kids. The first idiot to cross-post a grotty GIF to
comp.lang.c could get that site in a lot of legal hot water. So sites
don't make such claims.
When considering restrictions on USENET article distribution it is
important to distinguish news feeding (the forwarding of articles with no
regard to content) from editorial selection (the forwarding of articles
based on their content). Sue anyone you want for editorial selection of
your messages, but lay off legitimate ways to feed news and to recover
costs from such feeding. You'll destroy USENET rather than help it.
Cheers,
Rhys.
[
Usenet Hypertext FAQ Archive |
Search Mail Archive |
Authors |
Usenet
]
[
1993 |
1994 |
1995 |
1996 |
1997
]
© Copyright The Landfield Group, 1997
All rights reserved