Copyrighted publishing comes to Internet: The Electronic Newsstand [ long

[David Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

From: jonabbey@cs.utexas.edu (Jonathan David Abbey)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Copyrighted publishing comes to Internet: The Electronic Newsstand
Date: 12 Sep 93 00:00:37 GMT
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin


The following is a letter that I sent to the proprietors of the
Electronic Newstand, a new gopher service that publishes excerpts from
commercial magazines on the Internet.  Their information comes with 
a statement that the information cannot be redistributed in any fashion.


I found that this bothered me quite a lot, and so I have written this
letter to these folks trying to explain my feelings.  I'd appreciate any
comments or discussion on these themes.. what will be the effect of
Internet commercialization?  Will the culture of information sharing
be subsumed by the big publishers as they become aware of Internet?


To see the Electronic Newsstand, gopher to:


gopher.internet.com, port 2100


or use NCSA Mosaic to access URL


gopher://gopher.internet.com:2100/11/


-------------------------------------------------------------------------


I have looked over the information you have published on your
Internet Gopher, and I have some questions and comments.


My first question is, why should we care that you are doing this?  You
only publish a very small amount of information from a smattering of
publications.  The articles you do include are interesting, but there
is a vast wealth of information available on the Internet elsewhere,
information that is part of a free and dynamic exchange of ideas
rather than a static broadcast of one person's opinions.


Obviously, there is a place for static publication on the Internet.
However, your service is rather different from the vast
majority of Internet information services in that you explicitly deny
permission to copy or share the information you publish.  


Why should we be interested in accessing your information if we cannot
redirect the information to people that we think would be interested
in receiving it?  One of the primary strengths of the Internet and USENET
is that it allows us to share information with the people that we
think would be most interested in it.  When each of us has the ability
to publish and distribute information, why should we care to act as
passive recipients of someone else's proprietary information?  That's
a model appropriate to print and broadcast media.  On Internet, there
is not one information publisher on high and many information
recipients down below.  On Internet, we all produce, we all share.


Your model and your restrictions imply that sharing of information
might not really be what you are about.  I'm afaid that the
subscription invitations are more important to your endeavour than is
the sharing of information.  At one point you refer to your new
information providers as your clients.  What is your business model?
If you are in the business of providing your clients with access to
customers, I'd like to know that.  


I see no reason to be a product for someone else to sell without my
knowledge.  I am willing to sell my attention to someone else if the
rewards for doing so are sufficiently high.  But the rewards must be
significantly higher than I can get without having to sell myself in
such a way.  The information you are providing does not meet these
criteria -- I can get better information elsewhere without being told
who I may or may not share it with.


I really have more questions than I can very well articulate here, and
I really don't know how the information economy is going to work.  But
I do know that I am willing to work hard to produce and share
information with the world if they are willing to do likewise and
share the fruits with me.  I am willing to pay cash for interesting
and educational information, and do so with great regularity.  


So why am I upset with your service?  I guess I feel that it just
doesn't seem terribly honorable.  Internet is the result of a
tremendous amount of work that a very large number of people have done
to build a world in which we can so easily share information.  To come
in and take advantage of it to provide information that we cannot
share, for the sake of your clients, seems rather crass.


A naive viewpoint, I know.  I suppose I am just mourning the loss of
an innocence that was never really there.


cc: comp.org.eff.talk, editors@wired.com, wer@well.sf.ca.us


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Whole Earth Review Manifesto              wer@well.sf.ca.us
 WER #74, Spring 1992


  
 If you pick up Whole Earth Review without knowing what Whole Earth  
 Review is about, you'll probably be surprised.  Yes, we do regularly  
 publish articles about ecology.  But that's only part of the mix..  It isn't  
 easy to pin us down by looking over the table of contents.  
  
 Twenty years ago, Stewart Brand's statement of purpose for the Whole  
 Earth Catalog was:
  
 "We are as gods and might as well get good at it.  So far remotely done  
 power and glory -- as via government, big business, formal education,  
 church -- has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual  
 gains.   In response to this dilemma and to these gains, a realm of  
 intimate, personal power is developing -- the power of individuals to  
 conduct their own education, find their own inspiration, shape their own  
 environment, and share the adventure with whoever is interested.   
 Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the Whole Earth  
 Catalog."
  
 We still believe that. But we're a different team and it's a different  
 world.  We think we can be more precise about "tools that aid this  
 process."  So the Whole Earth Review staff has thought and talked and  
 composed this statement of purpose.  We're eager to hear what you  
 think of it.
  
 -o- WE ARE DEDICATED TO DEMYSTIFICATION, TO SELF-TEACHING, AND  
 TO ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES.  THUS OUR  
 MOTTO: "ACCESS TO TOOLS AND IDEAS."  
  
 Tools in the Whole Earth sense include hammers, books, and computer  
 conferencing systems.  Our readers are a community of tool-users who  
 share information with one another.  The ideas we make accessible have  
 not often been found in university courses, but are becoming recognized  
 as part of what you need to know to be truly educated.  Our readers  
 contribute to the editorial content as well, with both reviews and  
 articles.
  
 -o- WE RECOMMEND RATHER THAN ATTACK.
  
 Our magazine is an evaluation and access device.  It can help you  
 discover what is worth getting and how to get it.  We're here to point,  
 not to sell.  We have no financial obligation or connection to any of the  
 suppliers reviewed.  We only review stuff we think is great.  Why waste  
 your time with anything else?
  
 -o- WE CHANGE WITH THE TIMES THAT WE HELP CHANGE.
  
 Our publications are a call to, and support for, individual action.  The  
 first Whole Earth Catalogs were aimed at the so-called counter-culture,  
 the back-to-the-land folks who were attempting to live as much as  
 possible outside the system.  As we hoped, many of the attributes of the  
 counterculture movement became mainstream, especially ecological  
 issues and related concern with energy efficiency.  Our publications  
 have been influential.  But we don't spend much time thinking about  
 the same things we thought about in the sixties, and neither do our  
 readers.  This magazine and our catalogs progressed from being part of  
 a social movement to being a trusted reference like a good encyclopedia.  
  
 -o- WE UPDATE OURSELVES CONTINUALLY.
  
 By not accepting display advertising, we have extraordinary editorial  
 freedom to publish anything we think our readers need to know.   
 Conventional magazines exist and profit because they can deliver  
 readers to advertisers; subscriptions are a much less important source  
 of income.  Most magazines fish for readers and feed them to adver-
 tisers.  We fish for information and feed it to readers, who sustain us  
 with their subscriptions.  For readers, this means unobstructed and  
 challenging editorial material and unbiased reviews.
  
 -o- WE'RE NOT A "POLITICAL" MAGAZINE.
  
 We are committed to providing political tools and new ways of thinking  
 about politics, but we are not a forum for partisan politics.  
  
 -o- WE ARE DELIBERATELY ECLECTIC.
  
 Our content is addressed to many communities of readers who lead  
 different kinds of lives, and who may disagree with one another about  
 many things.  We provide tools for environmental activists; we give  
 technology-watchers and tinkerers a window on tomorrow's scientific  
 trends.  Our readers are men and women, young and old, urban and  
 rural, from all around the world.  They like to have their worldviews  
 expanded and their assumptions challenged.  They don't mind taking  
 the time to read, to think, and to discuss new ideas.  We offer tools for  
 generalists.
  
 --The Staff of Whole Earth Review
  
 Copyright Whole Earth Review 1992.  Permission granted to redistribute
 electronically.

-- 
Jonathan Abbey                                           jonabbey@cs.utexas.edu
Applied Research Laboratories                 The University of Texas at Austin
    "National Security" is the root password to the constitution. -- the Net
        Read: The Shockwave Rider -- John Brunner -- ISBN 0-345-32431-5