Tony's Bofcusm, Re: Compaq Evo n800w

From: Bela Lubkin (belal_at_sco.com)
Date: 11/27/03 

Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 00:52:52 GMT
To: scomsc@xenitec.ca

Tony Lawrence wrote:

> Bela Lubkin <belal@sco.com> wrote:
> >Jean-Pierre Radley wrote:
>
> >> Bela Lubkin typed (on Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 08:25:50AM +0000):
>
> >> | See:
> >> |
> >> | http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=20030812084145.GH24551@sco.com
> >>
> >> This article is also archived on Tony's site:
> >>
> >> http://www.aplawrence.com/Bofcusm/2289.html
>
> >Didn't know that. I don't see those because when I'm looking for
> >something I remember having posted, I search dejagoo, and it of course
> >doesn't know about derivative web-based presentations like Tony's
> >bofcusm.
>
> There are advantages and disadvantages to what I save. The advantage is that
> I don't save the crapola, so you don't have to wade through twenty thousand
> unimportant postings, and that my indexing tries to include words you
> might be searching by, rather than just what's in the text. The disadvantage
> is that I don't necessarily save something that might turn out to be what you
> want, and there's no way to thread what I saved or go to any references.

I think that what you're doing is a good service for OpenServer users.
But when pointing a user to one of my own articles, I prefer the cleaner
presentation offered by google.

> However,
> when I have wanted to do that, having the exact subject and date helps the Google
> search.

May I suggest that for future additions to the Bofcusm archive, you
include a URL pointing to the original? You really ought to go back and
do that for the 2000+ existing messages in the archive, but that would
be a big task. Not so big to add them to new ones. Use URLs of the
form:

  http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=[message-ID]

or even:

  http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=[message-ID]&output=gplain

and hopefully google won't decommission that in the future...

> >I also prefer the dejagoo presentation, it's closer to the original
> >form.
>
> Well, I do strip out what I think are unimportant header lines. Do you
> think I should leave them all in? I figured Subject, From, References and Date
> were all that is really of interest. I don't take out anything else; the
> rest is verbatim except in very rare cases where I think it's important
> to add some note for clarity, and that would always be explicitly set off..

I was going to ask for a "See this article in its original USENET form"
link, but this is cleaner: you should leave in the Message-ID header,
making it a hotlink to the article at google. That makes it easier for
people to cross-check with a USENET archiver, like google, to confirm
the legitimacy of the version you present. It may be true that you
don't edit the contents at all, but by pointing to an outside
independent copy of the same materials, you make that more manifest.

So for this article, the HTML source would include something like:

  Message-ID: &lt;<a href=http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=20030812084145.GH24551@sco.com>20030812084145.GH24551@sco.com&output=gplain</a>&gt;

As long as you're asking, I also have quibbles with your copyright
statement, quoted in full here:

" (c) Tony Lawrence All Rights Reserved
"
" This article is copyrighted material. You have permission to use it
" for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, as long as it is kept
" intact or if excerpts are clearly marked as excerpts and credit is
" given as specified herein.
"
" You may publish it in paper or electronic form. That includes
" magazine, newsletters, and web pages, both internal and external, for
" profit or not. Banner ads and other graphics may be removed, but all
" other text, hyperlinks and copyright notices, including this, should
" remain (but see below also). You may not delete text, alter it, or add
" to it in any way that does not clearly delineate what is yours and
" what comes from this site. You may alter fonts, font sizes and the
" like and reformat text as is appropriate for your use.
"
" You may select specific paragraphs or sections, but if you do so, you
" must either include this entire notice also, noting that you have not
" published the entire article, or simply note that the paragraphs you
" have published are part of a larger article and give the http address
" of the actual article.
"
" My main concern is that no one would be confused that you wrote
" something I wrote or vice-versa. If your use meets that concern, and
" allows people to find the original article here, I have no objection.
"
" This general permission specifically does NOT apply to test questions
" and answers.
"
" Some articles here are copyrighted by other individuals or
" corporations; these paragraphs do not apply to those articles even if
" accidentally included.
"
" We do appreciate being advised of any such use: Email:
" tony@aplawrence.com.

As I understand modern copyright laws, all writings are inherently
copyrighted by their authors. So the sentence about "Some articles" it
correct, but more correctly it should say "Articles not authored by Tony
Lawrence"; even more correctly, this copyright statement simply
shouldn't be appended to them. You might put on a different one about
how the _collection_ of articles is copyrighted as a collection (which
means that you have the right to restrict the duplication of your effort
in assembling the collection, but not the right to restrict use of
individual articles). Those articles within the collection which you
also authored should then have two copyright statements, one each for
the article and the collection.

Meanwhile, since this copyright statement _is_ present, it misleadingly
claims to grant a bunch of rights to the reader.

The author's rights towards USENET messages have not, as far as I know,
been explored in the courts. But I'm pretty sure that a court would not
consider an article posted on USENET to have ceded exactly the same
rights as your copyright statement cedes.

I don't think you should be, in effect, writing licenses for other
people's writings. The Bofcusm copyright statements should:

  - say that you copyright the whole thing as a collection

  - for articles by other authors, say that the copyrights of any
    individual article belong to that article's author, and that it is
    not your place to offer any particular rights or licenses toward
    such articles; contact the author for such information

  - for articles by you, whatever you want it to say

  - not make the reader decide which stanzas apply; that is, you should
    append different text to different types of articles, rather than
    appending one huge statement that has to be parsed by the reader

>Bela<

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