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Aucbvax.5782 fa.digest-p utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!digest-people Thu Jan 14 05:46:13 1982 For Research Use Only --- Not for Public Distribution >From CStacy@MIT-AI Wed Jan 13 21:58:34 1982

The problem of ensuring that ARPAnet mail is not distributed outside of the network community is a perpetual one, because many of the users on the network are unaware of the restrictions on the material.

I beleive that the best solution is to educate the network community to the problems which tend to arise when material is distributed off the network.

There are several problems with people distributing material from the network to the outside world.

There is always the threat of official or public accusations of misuse of the network for certain mailing lists. This actually happened with a list called WINE-LOVERS and Datamation, which was just a hint of the magnitude of SFL. The fiasco nearly resulted in MIT being removed from the network, and cost us several months of research time while we fought legal battles to show why our machines should not be removed from the ARPAnet. Of course, with a mailing list such as TCP-IP that particular sort of problem is very unlikely to occur.

But there are still other problems. One of the problems involves legal liability for statements and opinions published on ARPAnet mailing lists. One of the classic scenarios of this sort of liability involves the INFO-TERMS mailing list, which discusses and evaluates the characteristics of various terminal devices.

Suppose someone were to state that Terminal Foo is better than Terminal Bar, and that you should not bother with Terminal Bar. Imagine now that the message is republished or even casually redistributed outside the ARPAnet. The president of Bar Terminals Corporation sees the message and writes to his Congressional representative for an explanation as to why Government money from the taxpayer's pocket is being used to induce people to buy his competitors product and not his.

Still further problems involve such issues as copyright and propriety. The originator of a message to a mailing list does not expect that his words will end up in Computerworld or elsewhere.

The Defense Communications Agency (DCA), which is responsible for managing the ARPAnet has set down regulations and policies which are designed to protect the network from some of these problems. Naturally, most people who use the ARPAnet are unaware of the reasons behind the policies (or even that such policies exist!). Here is a section from a recent DCA memo on the subject:

"Files should not be FTPed by anyone unless they are files that have been announced as ARPANET-public or unless permission has been obtained from the owner. Public files on the ARPANET are not to be considered public files outside of the ARPANET, and should not be transferred, or their contents given or sold to the general public without permission of DCA or the ARPANET sponsors. Hosts which use a "guest" or "anonymous" FTP login convention should inform their local users about the ramifications of this convention with respect to unprotected files, as the users are not always aware that their files can be FTPed."

But "laying down the law" is a fairly useless way of solving this sort of problem. The problem is one of awareness, cooperation and trust. Only if people understand and care, will they take steps to protect a fragile institution like the ARPAnet.

For the most part, the problem is that people are simply unsure about releasing the material. Frequently a subscriber will ask before trying to redistribute material, sometimes they only come forward after it is too late. The only thing which a moderator can do is explain to people individually, in the detail required by the particular situation, why republishing the material is a bad idea.

I think that the explicit banner on the masthead of the Digest is a bad idea, because this will cause many people to think that if such a banner is NOT present (ie., on any other Digests or on future TCP Digests) that it is alright to redistribute the material.

In short, we are all in the hands of our neighbors. The best thing to do is to ensure that we are all educated as to how to take care of each other and ourselves.

Cheers, Chris

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