Welcome to the Commnets conference. This is intended to be a place
where those interested in maintaining or establishing Free-Nets,
public conferencing systems, and community networks can exhange
ideas and information about what works and what doesn't.
 
Public access networks face many uncertainties and challenges
ranging from fund-raising in an increasingly competitive situation,
to potential threats of legal action or prosecution for violations
of little understood laws. Finally, public access networks are
still defining their role and purpose and their relationships to
each other.
 
This conference is designed to allow these networks in Michigan
(while being open to any) to discuss and debate these and other
questions, and to use electronic conferencing to counter the
problems of time and distance. We seek to discuss common problems
while sharing valuable knowledge gained from unique experience.
 
This is an open conference in keeping with established policy and
traditions of Grex. You do not have to be involved directly in a
public access project to have valuable ideas so feel free to join
and share ideas even if you are not directly involved.
 
A note about security issues: because this conference is open to
the world, specifics about security problems and solutions are
better left to more secure means of communication. Security issues
can and should be discussed here, but technical details should be
confined to system operators with security responsibilities.

19 responses total.

so like can any one help me out with some cool freenets

Umm. I'm not sure I understand what kind of help you are looking for. 
By freenet I assume you mean a community-run system of on-line
resources which is free to the residents of a particular area.

Actually the term "Free-net" is a service mark of NPTN, a non-profit
organization in the US that has gone bankrupt recently, but the term cannot
be used to describe systems that are not affiliated. We use the term
"Community Network" as a more general term.

If you are looking for a list of community networks, I can point you to a web
page which points to most of them.

This response has been erased.

I did not catch that either. I too would like some information on the events.
Last I knew they were attempting a radical restructuring - moving away from
their traditional model and, I thought, toward more decentralized support for
their member free-nets, and less mandated structure. Not long after that
Tallahassee Free-Net started taking advertising and being much more agressive
about community support. Does anyone know more? 

NPTN filed for protection against its creditors several weeks ago. I think
they will be chapter 7 (liquidation). There is an organization of community
networks forming called ACN.  Here is a message from Madeline Gonzalez of 
Boulder COmmunity Net <madeline@bcn.boulder.co.us> to the communet list:

>We will be having a face-to-face meeting of our Ad-Hoc Steering Commitee
>for this upcoming Association for Community Networking the weekend of Nov.
>8th. Information about our effort is as I've mentioned available at
>http://bcn.boulder.co.us/community/resources/ACN.html.  Please let me know
>if you feel there is anything of significance that we are not addressing
>and should be, if you would like to be involved in some way, or if you have
>anything you'd like me to bring up at our meeting.  I will be in touch
>again after our meeting to report on our status.

I haven't followed through and looked at this resource yet.

The service mark "Free-net" is still owned by the NPTN shell, and will
probably be sold as an asset, so don't bandy it about quite yet.

Thanks, Steve. I guess I forgot to tell Keith about my email address change
when I let the K_12 account expire. I wondered why communet has bee so quiet
lately. Dumb me! 

Now I have heard that the Grand Rapids Free-net has lost its internet
connection. That is all I know at this point about their problems.

Hi... I'm new here (unless you didn't guess ;])
Does anyone know what is going on with nether.net??? Either I can reach it from
my location or it's been down for a coupla months.

This response has been erased.

I am a newby at this whole thing. I am amazed a community such as this exists
My question is twofold. Is grex a local call from the 248 Farmington area?
IN addition if not are there any "freenet" services available in that
area.Thanks!....

Grex is located in Ann Arbor, which is not a local call from
Farmington. I don't know what freenet services are available in
Farmington.

This response has been erased.

I hope you get connected in Farmington, Jeff. I think the Detroit Free-net
will be able to serve you there. Community networks are running in a lot of
metropolitan areas, and even in smaller cities, like Ann Arbor. Some of them
face enormous funding problems. 

Most community networks now have some kind of community conferencing, which
makes the system a destination rather than just an on-ramp. Grex is very much
this way, as is the twin cities free-net in Minnesota. Detroit's system is
less so, but I am not sure to what extent. The good news is that even if you
get connected through a community net that has little of its own conferncing
content, you can probably still use it to connect to Grex.

Check with the Farmington Public Library Jeff.  While the Ann Arbor Library
charges for access through the Library Network, some of the northwest
libraries offer free access (without email or disk space) and you can always
use Juno, HotMail or even grex for e-mail.  i know both Bloomfield and
southfield libraries offer web access free since two of my family members are
hooked up that way.

welcome!  and happy holidays  (to ALL!!) !

I know this is probabely a stupid question to ask here, but I live all the
way over in Australia. I am interested in finding a conferencing setup like
grex, and I was wondering if anyone knows of such a group or even a site which
could help me? I feel kinda left out here on this little island out in the
middle of nowhere ;)

Anybody in Australia that wanted to could use Grex. They could even start
an item of interest to Australians. So should the question be, "why aren't
there more Austrialians interested in conferencing?", rather than "is
there a Grex like system in Australia?"?

A Psycho Is Attacking My Family! Can anyone help?

We've tried legal restraining orders, we've called the police, we've 
called the telephone company. But still no help! We live in South 
Carolina and a psycho lives in California. He is a telecommunication 
specialist and we receive hang-up and crank calls all the time. We 
sincerely believe the psycho in California is the culprit but according 
to the telephone company there's nothing they can do because (to quote 
them) he comes in via "trunk lines" and uses several other methods?
 
We're looking for a piece of hardware that will identify incoming calls 
by the caller id and simply refuse to put the call through unless the 
incoming call has a caller id or some other method of tracking the 
call's origin. Do you have any advice?
 
Thanks for any help ...

=====================> Frederick Volking
fvolking@ecms.net

Ask your phone company for Caller ID service.

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