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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 312
Netizens-Digest Thursday, July 1 1999 Volume 01 : Number 312
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
[netz] Re:[IFWP]Computer science or the "market", gov't or ICANN
[netz] Re: Computer science or the "market", government or ICANN
[netz] Yahoo: Your House Is My House (US)
[netz] Replies to U.S. Congress from Magaziner and Daley on ICANN
[netz] Breaking News: Yahoo: Your Homestead's Your Own (US)
Re: [netz] Breaking News: Yahoo: Your Homestead's Your Own (US)
[netz] Breaking the News
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 11:21:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jay Hauben <jay@dorsai.org>
Subject: [netz] Re:[IFWP]Computer science or the "market", gov't or ICANN
"Richard J. Sexton" <richard@tangled.web> wrote (quoting Ronda to
begin with):
>>>>The Internet was not the "market" when it was born and it isn't
>>>>and won't be a "market now or in the future.
>>>
>>>>It is a communication medium.
>>
>>So is a newspaper, and by Jesus look at the ads in that thing.
>>
>>Is that what you wish as the model for the Internet?
>"I don't wish to offer an opinion about how the net should be run; that's
>like offering an opinion about how salamanders should grow: nobody has any
>control over it, regardless of what opinions they might have" - BKR
The Internet and many other things are not biological systems like
a salamander is. People of good well and with public interest can and
should exert what effort they can to help direct the growth and development
of social institutions like the Internet into socially valuable directions
- --
> richard@tangled.web sexton@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> "They were of a mind to govern us and we were of a mind to govern ourselves."
Jay
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 14:04:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: Computer science or the "market", government or ICANN
From: "Richard J. Sexton" <richard@tangled.web>
>1) there has never been anything in human history as big, diverse or
>ungovernable as the Internet.
That's not the point. The point is that the Internet has grown
up from a special environment at ARPA's IPTO (the Information Processing
Techniques Office) where it was protected and computer science
leadership could be provided for its growth and development.
That is still needed.
Knowing the history of this development helps to understand the
Internet and its requirements.
That is why its history is very important. But in general it
is treated as if it emerged out of Athena's head.
Ronda
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 02:30:17
From: John Walker <jwalker@networx.on.ca>
Subject: [netz] Yahoo: Your House Is My House (US)
It's not often that I make a personal comment regarding an article
that I post but this is unbelievable. Have the folks at Yahoo lost
their minds.
I will be hosting a Using Linux Level 1 course on the 15th. of
July. Included in this course is access to a Linux machine and your
own shell account with 10 megs of hard drive space.
Details at: http://virtual3.bestnet.org/jwalker/linux1.htm
John Walker
- -------------
Yahoo: Your House Is My House (US)
by Declan McCullagh
3:00 a.m. 29.Jun.99.PDT
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/20472.html
If you're a GeoCities homesteader, be warned: Your Web site is no
longer your own.
Yahoo, which launched its Yahoo-GeoCities site Monday, says it owns
all Web pages, articles, and images on member sites and has
"irrevocable" rights to them for all time.
This presents a problem for those GeoCities members who have
painstakingly assembled large sites with dozens, even hundreds, of
pages of valuable material.
"Somebody please tell me that this does not mean that Yahoo is
demanding the rights to a large portion of my professional writing
and photography if I use my Web site there," complained Tracy Marks,
who estimates that she has 600 Web pages and 23 MB of files on
GeoCities.
To create or update GeoCities pages, members must agree to a
contract that gives Yahoo broad rights over their intellectual
property.
Under its terms of service, publishers must give Yahoo a
"royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully
sublicensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt,
publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute,
perform and display such Content" in any form or media.
Yahoo defends the terms in the contract, saying it's trying to
prevent itself from being sued over copyright infringements and wants
the ability to promote its service.
Consumer advocates say Yahoo has gone too far.
"It's a bad idea. People don't read the fine print on these
contracts. People will give up intellectual property to Yahoo without
understanding what they're getting into," said Jamie Love of the
Ralph Nader-affiliated Consumer Project on Technology.
"People have made investments by promoting their site and people
start to link to them. They're changing the rules in midstream," Love
said.
Legal experts say that it's likely Yahoo will change its mind.
"I bet that once it comes to light, they'll modify it. They can't
get away with it. They'd have people leaving in droves," said David
Post, a law professor at George Mason University who teaches
intellectual property law.
"My prediction is that Yahoo will say, 'That's not what we intended.
We don't really want to do all these things with their content. We
had it as an insurance policy,'" Post said.
Some scholarly journals have standardized similar contracts that are
even more restrictive: They require authors to give up all rights to
the publication. But as authors began to want to post their writings
on their Web sites, journals have started to become more flexible.
Yahoo will let users keep their existing GeoCities pages under the
old contract, but customers cannot modify their site until they agree
to the revised terms of service.
Some other Web page-hosting services have similar contracts. Tripod,
which is owned by the parent company of Wired News, requires its
users to grant it "a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable,
nonexclusive, worldwide, unrestricted license to use, copy, modify,
transmit, distribute, and publicly perform or display the submitted
Member Web Page."
Links:
http://www.westwinds.com/
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
http://www.cptech.org/
http://www.gmu.edu/
- -------------
- - Student sentenced to 2 years in prison for racist e-mails (US)
A Chinese-born college student said he was consumed by "immaturity
and frustrations" when he sent threatening and racially derogatory
e-mails to Hispanics.
- - Army site latest hacking target (US)
Cyber-intruders continue assault on federal sites; Army's site
defaced over the weekend.
- - Internet changing mortgage industry (US)
When Gary Gellman's customers come to him claiming they've found a
lower mortgage rate on the Web -- as he says they constantly do --
the co-owner of Northstar Mortgage in Campbell tries to match the
rate rather than lose the business.
- - Artworks re-created for virtual museum (Japan)
IBM group companies are creating digital images of world art and
museum collections for display on the Internet to enable people to
appreciate the works without visiting exhibitions.
- - China Loves/Hates the Net (Asia)
Reading international press coverage about Internet restrictions in
China might lead you to believe that the country is cyberphobic and
that the government and censorship are impeding Web development.
In fact, the government is encouraging and supporting China's
information technology growth.
- - Hotmail hit by new round of problems (US)
Hotmail users are getting hot under the collar about a new round of
service problems that some claim have kept them out of their
accounts for as long as four days.
- - Yahoo: Your House Is My House (US)
If you're a GeoCities homesteader, be warned: Your Web site is no
longer your own.
- - Bad news delivered more accurately by e-mail, study suggests (US)
A new study suggests that the unenviable task of bearing bad news is
easier - and the information gets delivered more accurately - when
done by e-mail rather than face-to-face or on the telephone.
- - AltaVista: Not just a search engine (US)
Revamped AltaVista site adds a 'freshness guarantee' and other
features.
- - Dole calls for libraries to block porn access, even for adults (US)
In a bid Monday to enter the family-values debate, Republican
presidential candidate Elizabeth Dole wants to withhold federal
money from public libraries that fail to install computer software to
close "pornography-permitting loopholes" on the Internet, even for
adult users.
- - Off the shelf and onto the Web (US)
Encyclopedias migrate from books to CDs to online sites, placing
knowledge a mouse click away
- - New Lists and Journals
* NEW: Taxi-Passenger - Discussion Forum for passengers of taxis
* CHANGE: Chemical-Illnet
* NEW: SEAlaska@onelist.com
On-line Learning Series of Courses
http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker/course.htm
Member: Association for International Business
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/ _/
_/ John S. Walker _/
_/ Publisher, CSS Internet News (tm) _/
_/ (Internet Training and Research) _/
_/ PO Box 57247, Jackson Stn., _/
_/ Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8P 4X1 _/
_/ Email jwalker@hwcn.org _/
_/ http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker _/
_/ _/
_/ "To Teach is to touch a life forever" _/
_/ On the Web one touch can reach so far! _/
_/ _/
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 09:06:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Replies to U.S. Congress from Magaziner and Daley on ICANN
Some interesting replies to letters - and the same web site has
letters sent by Bliley to Dyson and Dept of Commerce in June.
In adobe format, at the bottom of the following pages:
William Daley:
http://com-notes.house.gov/cchear/hearings106.nsf/b2cc6be46b2b2d2285256720007e4972/89227d363b2c70c58525679800537265?OpenDocument
Ira Magaziner:
http://com-notes.house.gov/cchear/hearings106.nsf/b2cc6be46b2b2d2285256720007e4972/24e194529d7b1ec6852567980053d392?OpenDocument
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 00:08:56
From: John Walker <jwalker@networx.on.ca>
Subject: [netz] Breaking News: Yahoo: Your Homestead's Your Own (US)
It would appear that when Netizens band together we can be a real
force for change. It took less than 24 hours for Yahoo to adjust it's
attitude. Isn't this what our global community is all about?
I will be hosting a Using Linux Level 1 course on the 15th. of
July. Included in this course is access to a Linux machine and your
own shell account with 10 megs of hard drive space. This type of
access gives you far greater control over your Web site than most
hosts.
Details at: http://virtual3.bestnet.org/jwalker/linux1.htm
John Walker
- ---------------
Breaking News: Yahoo: Your Homestead's Your Own (US)
by Declan McCullagh
4:30 p.m. 30.Jun.99.PDT
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/20518.html
In response to a boycott and criticism from outraged customers,
Yahoo late Wednesday abandoned rules that had given it eternal
ownership of all Geocities Web sites.
"We're seeing how we can clarify our intentions, given the recent
outcry," said Tim Brady, Yahoo vice president of production.
The new terms of service, which took effect 3 p.m. PST Wednesday
after executives spent the morning huddling with lawyers, now stress
that "Yahoo does not own content you submit."
The company said that Yahoo will use customers' intellectual
property only when displaying it on Web sites and for promotion and
marketing.
Many Geocities homesteaders worried that Yahoo could take their Web
pages and republish them -- even in another form, which the contract
allowed, such as books or CD-ROMs. Customers still had the right to
publish or distribute their intellectual property themselves.
Experts say the changes are poorly drafted, but conclude that Yahoo
has seriously constrained its ability to republish members' content.
"The addition is a significant limitation on what they can do. They
can still reproduce, publish, translate, but can only do that for
certain purposes," said David Post, professor of law at Temple
University.
"If they took my Web site and printed it out and published it as a
book, they can't do that on the basis of this license," said Post,
who teaches intellectual property law.
That's exactly what Yahoo has said all along. "Clearly our intention
is not to publish books," Brady said. "Hopefully, with the language
we're looking at, it will be very clear to our users that that is
not the case."
Brady said Yahoo's rules were in place before it bought Geocities,
though he conceded they were not written with Web hosting services
in mind.
"If we took a snapshot of our business today, we could make
paragraph eight [in the terms of service] more narrow," he said. "But
we all know how quickly the Web moves and everything's in flux. We
need the flexibility to adapt our services."
When Geocities homesteaders recently learned that Yahoo said it owns
all Web pages, articles, and images on member sites and has
"irrevocable" rights to them for all time, the response was quick
and furious.
"I did not spend the time to create unique content for my friends,
family, or anyone else who might be interested in my home page only
to have the fruit of my efforts appropriated by Yahoo/GeoCities,"
Geocities member Wes Kim wrote in an email to Wired News. "What
incentive is there for home page creators to generate rich content?"
Some disappointed homsteaders launched a boycott.
"Stop using Yahoo. Boycott them, and all of their properties. This
includes Yahoo.com, GeoCities.com and Broadcast.com. Don't buy
products from merchants at shopping.yahoo.com and let them know
why!" the organizers said.
Under the old terms of service, site owners had to give Yahoo a
"royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully
sublicensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt,
publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute,
perform and display such content" in any form or media.
Links:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
http://www.wired.com/news/news/wiredview/story/20495.html
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/3993/
http://come.to/boycottyahoo/
- --------------
Also in this issue:
- - Breaking News: Yahoo: Your Homestead's Your Own (US)
In response to a boycott and criticism from outraged customers,
Yahoo late Wednesday abandoned rules that had given it eternal
ownership of all Geocities Web sites.
- - Australian Net Censor Law Passes (Australia)
CANBERRA, Australia -- The political leaders of this nation on
Wednesday passed into law one of the world's most far-reaching
online content censorship regimes.
- - Creating An Effective Web Page
A number of web articles outline how an URL's home page should look,
and what the goal should be. For example: Be precise. Present facts
clearly. Talk about what the viewer wants to know. Make it easy to
read--avoid clutter. Simplify the ordering process, etc. Such advice
is all to the good, but falls short by failing to tell HOW to
achieve these goals. Just how does one go about actually constructing
a web page?
- - Cultivating a sense of community online (US)
Unifying themes, hosts are seeds of intertwining lives
- - Auction Web site focuses on Spanish (US/Latin America)
From eBay to Onsale, the Internet has seen an explosion of auction
sites in the last year.
But Fort Lauderdale's Subasta.com, which first appeared on the Web
May 17, is the only auction site designed for Spanish speakers.
- - Web site a valuable tool for family of readers (Canada)
The relentless price increases of cable television have pushed my
children to become avid readers. I am too cheap to pay $30 a month
for basic cable. Television is dull as a result and the kids have had
to adjust.
- - Web consortium approves design standards for XML (US)
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- An Internet standards body has approved
coding specifications that will allow the designing of Web pages
using Extensible Markup Language, or XML.
- - The Linux Missionary Who's Taking on Microsoft (US/Canada)
CEO Robert Young's zeal is helping Red Hat grab sales from Windows
NT and creating buzz for an IPO. Will he make more inroads with a Net
strategy?
- - Online radio, fun sites liven up summer (US)
Even a superficial study of history will show that in every field of
human endeavor, the greatest progress comes from a relatively few,
short periods of intense creativity.
- - Yahoo to Own GeoCities Content, Riling Members (US)
Internet: Many personal Web sites include copyrighted works. Company
denies plans to 'grab stuff and package it.'
- - Putting a Meter on the Flow of Information (US)
Here's a business puzzler for you: Who owns the stock quotations?
Are they the property of the stock exchanges that administer the
market, or the individual traders who "create" it by buying and
selling stocks?
- - EU probes NSI for antitrust violations (EU)
In a move likely to intensify controversy over privatizing the
registration of domain names, the European Union is investigating
whether a Network Solutions contract for new registrars violates
Continental antitrust laws, the company confirmed.
- - New Lists and Journals
* Canada-teens -- email pals
* CabotCove
* Ask-Science - Do you have a science question?
On-line Learning Series of Courses
http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker/course.htm
Member: Association for International Business
- -------------------------------
Excerpt from CSS Internet News (tm) ,-~~-.____
For subscription details email / | ' \
jwalker@hwcn.org with ( ) 0
SUBINFO CSSINEWS in the \_/-, ,----'
subject line. ==== //
/ \-'~; /~~~(O)
"On the Internet no one / __/~| / |
knows you're a dog" =( _____| (_________|
http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker
- -------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 13:00:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Breaking News: Yahoo: Your Homestead's Your Own (US)
John Walker <jwalker@networx.on.ca> wrote:
>I will be hosting a Using Linux Level 1 course on the 15th. of
>July. Included in this course is access to a Linux machine and your
>own shell account with 10 megs of hard drive space. This type of
>access gives you far greater control over your Web site than most
>hosts.
>Details at: http://virtual3.bestnet.org/jwalker/linux1.htm
>John Walker
This is really an ad it would seem and doesn't seem appropriate
as a post to the Netizens list.
I am sending this as well to John asking him *not* to post such
things on the Netizens list.
Ronda
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 16:39:25 +0000
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Breaking the News
> am sending this as well to John asking him *not* to post such
> things on the Netizens list.
>
Can you distinguish between a sig and an ad? John posts lots of
good stuff, but of course if one is commerce-minded, one calls
them loss-leaders or come-ons for his newsletter, and his entire
message is therefore spam.
Yep, there oughta be a law preventing entrepreneurs from using
*interesting news in their merchandising. Maybe we could have a
Good Newskeeping Seal, which would assure us that certain
events (and the people in them, and the dates they occurred, or
any image that would suggest that any such event *could occur)
would never be sullied by being mentioned at all, much less in that
harsh, vulgar, _common_ language used by vendors in the street
and such-like riffraff.
kerry, about to take this up with the Triumvirate
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #312
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