Fuck UseNet (fwd)

[Kent Crispin]

E. Allen Smith allegedly said:
> 
> From:	IN%"ravage at EINSTEIN.ssz.com"  "Jim Choate" 15-FEB-1997 07:11:54.43
> 
> >Perhaps in addition to the X-foo structures we have discussed already we
> >might consider adding,
> 
> >X-distrib-policy: foo
> 
> >Where foo might be,
> 
> >         Public Domain
> >         All rights reserved, contact author for redistribution
> >         Distribution for non-commercial uses permitted
> >         Refer to authors header
> >         Copyleft
> >         etc.
> 
> >or whatever the policy might be for a given remailer. This would
> >significantly aid folks in their shopping around.
> 
> 	The basic difficulty with this idea is that _senders_ generally
> don't have much of a choice where the messages go, once you've decided
> to accept them. In other words, just because you've decided to accept
> a message doesn't mean it suddenly becomes
> copyleft/public domain/whatever. Now, if you, say, announced that only
> subscribers to your particular list, subscribers to any other lists
> adopting the same idea, and those who'd sign a consent agreement could
> post through your list, that wouldn't be a problem... although I
> suspect you wouldn't get many subscribers.
> 	-Allen

That wouldn't be the way it work -- Jim operates one of the cp 
remailers; I operate another.  Jim has a standard policy concerning 
public domain/copyright that is different than mine.  So *I* put an 
X-distrib-policy header in all the cp mail I forward to him.  More 
precisely, all of my incoming mail for "cypherpunks at songbird.com" 
gets the header.

This protocol needs a bit of refinement, and perhaps some hacking at 
majordomo, but seems fairly straightforward.

Jim's policy is actually very reasonable.  It has a rational basis, 
though one might disagree with it, and it is easy to deal with 
it this way.  A more extreme policy -- "The operator of this mailing 
list claims an exclusive copyright on every piece of mail sent to it; 
by sending to it you agree to this policy", for example -- would be 
harder to deal with.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent at songbird.com,kc at llnl.gov		the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   5A 16 DA 04 31 33 40 1E  87 DA 29 02 97 A3 46 2F