response 51 of 124:

Feb 11 03:28 UTC 1995

For those of you who are involved in the Intel Vs Sparc discussion, it is
not real important what the CPU is.  A 486DX66/2 can probably keep up
with a low to mid level sparc chip.  The critical difference for this
environment is interrupt handling and bus speed.  For those, the Sparc S bus
architecture is significantl better than the usual ISA bus 486.  If you are
talking PCI bus, you may have a better chance of keeping up with the load.  If
not, do the  Sparc.

response 53 of 124:

Feb 11 04:34 UTC 1995

Earth to Mark!

response 55 of 124:

Feb 11 07:50 UTC 1995

What do you mean, aruba?

8*)

response 57 of 124:

Feb 12 12:15 UTC 1995

(Re newsgroups with copyright violations -- Prodigy now carries usenet
news, including I believe all the alt.sex groups and the groups with
supposed copyright violations.  If Playboy cares, they now have some
pretty deep pockets to aim their lawyers at.)

response 59 of 124:

Feb 12 20:12 UTC 1995

   Why?  Well, for one thing, its the right thing to do.  For another,
Grex is something of a tempting target, for those who might be interested
in teaching a lesson to systems in general.  We're a) High visibility.  Grex
is far more widely known than most of us think.  b) We're not rich.  We'd
have problems mounting a real defense because of this.  c) There aren't
enough users here to become outraged enough to matter.

response 61 of 124:

Feb 13 04:09 UTC 1995

   Why? Because we would wind up carrying hundreds--several hundreds of
illegal pictures.
   Given that Grex is a high-visibality site, and we have no real
defenses, we're risking a whole lot for a very little.
   But most importantly, Grex is making a statement, which is that we
won't knowingly carry illegal material when it is clear whats going on.

response 63 of 124:

Feb 13 06:16 UTC 1995

   Its on my list of things this week, except that I found out today
that Ameritech hasn't fixed our bad line yet, like I was told we would.
So I get to "talk" to Ameritech again tomorrow, and we'll see what
happens.  But I have the parts for the cable ready.

response 65 of 124:

Feb 13 17:28 UTC 1995

   Guess what?  Playboy.com is on the net, and they have WWW service.
I believe they carry some photos of their current centerfold, too.  So
they are now in the game.  It will be interesting to see what happens in
the future with them.
   I have to disagree with you on the playboy doesn't care thought Marcus--
about two years ago, I saw part of an interview with Hugh Hefners daughter,
who is the chief operating person at Playboy.  I was about to pass by it,
but the interviewer asked about the coming electronic age, and she responded.
She said that Playboy would be there, and touched upon legal issues, among
which was the proliferation of illegally scanned copies being passed around
on BBS's.  She was definately aware of things back then and was concerned.
What they've been doing is anyones guess.

response 67 of 124:

Feb 13 22:03 UTC 1995

        Hmph. looks like I'l have to go elsewhere for this service, then...
"oh, PRODIGY..."

response 69 of 124:

Feb 14 01:16 UTC 1995

Out of curiosity, don't text newsgroups pose similar legal problems, since 
peoples' writings usually have implicit copyrights?  Or is that right waved
when they post it?  This response is (c) 1995 by ajax, all rights reserved.

response 71 of 124:

Feb 14 04:25 UTC 1995

   It is assumed that any text entry copyrighted by an individual that
that person is OK.  Will there be illegal exceptions to that?  Certanly.
But not at the level of some of the alt.sex picture groups.

response 73 of 124:

Feb 14 07:40 UTC 1995

Copyright law has changed a lot in the past 20 years.  It certainly used
to be the case that you had to put an explicit copyright claim in, or
you lost your rights - by default, material was assumed to be in the
public domain.  But the law has been revised now such that this is no
longer really the case; and the notice is less important, even after
"initial publication" in some cases.

Copyright is essentially a property of publication; so the idea of
extending "copyright" back to the moment of creation, as Selena stated,
is in fact a very recent legal development.  It used to be the case that
it was impossible to claim both copyright and trade secret protection;

There's a very famous case of this, that of Unix vs. BSD.  (well,
Berkeley vs. USL).  When Berkeley originally started work on "bsd unix";
they started work with something called "Unix 32/V", which they got from
AT&T.  Originally, AT&T intended to copyright it, but at the advice of
their lawyers (possibly because trade secret law was then "stronger"),
they decided to protect it as a trade secret instead.  So, at the 11th
hour, they pulled out all the copyright messages, before sending it to
Berkeley.  However, AT&T has since done quite a bit in terms of
"publishing" Unix; so they no longer really have the ability to claim
any trade secrets in "Unix 32/V"; and that is why Berkeley, and BSDI,
had a very reasonable case against AT&T, when AT&T tried to keep them
from "publishing" bsd.  This is all based on the law of the time, which
is, of course, no longer true.

Oh yes, there's another issue of copyright law to consider too: the
consequences of violating copyright.  There are 2 things you can do to
someone who violates your copyright; you can keep somebody from
continuing to do it, and you can ask for "damages" for the violation.
However, in order to get damages at all, you have to register the
copyright.  Even then, the damages are limited to a function of the
damage done to the market - ie, the lost sales revenue (times some
factor?)  So a *small* copyright infringement is, usually, quite
literally, not worth going after.  Caveat: this is based on what I
remember of copyright law several years ago: it may have changed some
(and you should certainly consult with a lawyer if you care!) but from
what I've heard, it's not greatly different today.

Er, we're talking about usenet groups & copyright, aren't we?

Nearly all of the text in the text only news groups are in fact entered
by the authors themselves, so it's pretty clear they intend, and have
granted permission, for their text to be distributed with usenet news.
Since it's not registered, and probably doesn't have a large market
value, the "risk" associated with almost all of this text is probably
relatively minimal.

The pictures, on the other hand, are in a very different legal state;
just for starters, there is undoubtedly a complicated legal relationship
between the models & the photographers, and then between them and their
publisher, and distributer.  There is also quite a bit of money flowing
in this relationship between the various players, and because we are a
society of prudes, all of these players face constant legal challenges
in pursing their business, and hence are undoubtedly far more familiar
with lawyers and the relevant laws in their business, than most people.
That means that this is significantly riskier.

If you look at other areas where copyright is today pursued
aggressively, you can often find there is a history in the past where
copyright was not pursued nearly so aggressively, and then a change in
technology made it easier to cheat on copyright.  Some examples of this
include the music business; for instance, "Happy Birthday" is a
classical example.  Even though "Happy Birthday" is an icon in society
today, and I doubt most people even know it's copyrighted, you will
*very* rarely hear it in movies or anywhere else; because not only is it
copyrighted, but the copyright owners pursue their rights quite
aggressively.  Another example is the entire photocopier market; where
today photocopier vendors work hard to discourage "mistakes".

From what Steve says here; it probably *really is* only a matter of time
until PlayBoy goes after somebody big on usenet.  So, for what it
counts, you saw it here first.