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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