News group or private forum?

As Tom in Missouri so eloquently stated:

You know...that's almost creepy.

Copying newsgroup posts into a forum!!! WTF???

And... I'm sure plagerism to some extent.

I have to agree with you Tom, not what I can be a part of.

I'm sure some will rejoice but this is my last post, I will not be associated in any way with JLA Enterprises Technologies Integration.

You guys take care an save the wave!

Dad

Creepy is the right word! Some of us "old-timers" will recall chasing JLA out of here a few years ago for this very reason. I kept a file on this guy at that time and his name is Jim Adams, JLA Enterprises Technologies Integration, 12100 Bedford Wds Dr. #209, Raleigh, NC 27614 (919) 488-3415. The guy has serious issues and I'd suggest he be placed in your killfile.

Why was/is Dad so against JLA? Being a recent newbie, I'm not aware of any past history. I'm not sure I like JLA doing what they are doing, but don't think it's illegal in any way. Immoral, maybe.

He will be surely missed.

TomC '90 ZR1

Dad wrote:

Oh, give me a friggin break. What a bunch of whiners.

What is so "creepy"? There are PLENTY of sites that mirror this news group or "copy newsgroups posts into a forum" as the previous poster said.

Check

Tom wrote:

If you are a newbie, please do not turn into a complainer like some of these other old men. We have all been here since the crack of time and for some of them, old habits die hard.

As far as Dad...who knows what his problem is. Maybe it is aching joints and his ol lady isn't putting out anymore. Seriously, I do not know what his JLA problem is and I don't care.

As far as it being "immoral" about mirroring a newsgroup, then perhaps all of these are guilty of the same thing? Yeah right.

GOOGLE?

I actually prefer the web format instead of traditional news reader format. I think they are much easier to read and far better organized in web/forum format.

Isn't that odd Richard - I don't recall seeing you here until recently. Perhaps you could favor us with a Google link to one of your "Old" posts, just to verify the veracity of your statement?

Spoken as we might expect from an AOL user. You're used to such nuisances!

Richard:

I promise you won't hear any whining from me. Unless it's a from a GM

It sounded to me like there was some kind of serious past history. Was just curious.

TomC '90ZR1

I think that, for those who have been around the Usenet since its early days, there's a certain feeling of charity and public ownership that gets chaffed when a commercial site gobbles up the content and contributes nothing to the discussion. If it were mirrored in total, I'd be tempted to just view it as an alternative portal (like an alt or fido list) and accept the ads as paying for the cost to covert it to a different format.

Problem with most conversions is that they fail to show entire posts. Some conversions intentionally or accidently delete entire posts during the conversion. This seems to happen in threads that encompass several weeks. I think that's a bit shoddy in a technical forum. Further, when opinion within a thread get's "fractured" it may not represent the author's intent. Dad, bless him, taken out of the context of the thread might not come across the way he intended -- and I think that's a very valid concern for anyone who's gained some respect for his or her experience and is quite candid in writing Usenet posts.

For those who have strong feelings about mirroring, copyright all of your posts. (and save them with the 'intent' of writing a 'how-to' book) And, when you find them pirated, hire a local attorney to write the portal a 'strong letter.' Next step is a strong letter to the portal's host.

Paul H.

Richard Padilla wrote:

Well, the biggest site of them "Google" that does this seems to have no problem retaining and mirroring groups in total.

I guess it would all depend on the particular portal's policy and ability on article retention. If a portal didn't have a large retention capability (it seems that most advertise a retention of anywhere of 1 month to 1 year - with Google being the exception at forever) and they just picked up posts blindly - well thread fracturing could be a problem. Having worked with a BB software systems myself (VBulletin - Invision etc) I do know that most of the major platforms out there only mirror complete threads and drop threads during the mirroring process that do not have an origin post or cannot be matched up with an origin post.

On the copyright issue, I seem to remember back when Deja News was bought by Google there was a big (well depends on who's perspective, but in reality it wasn't that big) stink over USENET copyright and all the USENET posts that Deja had archived being sold for THEIR profit. All in all, about 3000 people made a petition over it and not much really became of it (Google Groups is still going strong.) As with Deja, you can write Google and request that any post that "you" are the author of be removed and they will remove it. There is also the ability to do a cancel message via newsreader which will result in the post being removed from the entire USENET. Keep in mind though that a large amount of news servers out there do not honor the old traditional type of USENET cancel requests so the poster's message will never completely disappear.

The majority of forums/portals have the same policy as Google for removal and many provide reporting/removal request links on each post so if anyone does not want their posts to appear on any particular site most likely all it would take is to make the request on each post and they would remove it. My thinking on this is that if anyone is going to post something on the USENET, they (should) know well and good that it is going to appear all over the world. I guess if it is that important, they could go to all or some of the countless sites that are portals/gateways such as Google and request removal from each - but really if it comes to that much of an obsession for anyone, my advice would be to get a life and a girlfriend!

As Richard Padilla so eloquently stated:

Wow... you took some offense to our post against such practices?

It just seemed odd to have seen my posts mirrored like that. But I suppose you don't mind having someone make money off your intellectual property. So be it!

I'm done with this newsgroup. It's been fun guys!

I think it is time to go look up VetteNet again. Being an email list meant I used to get a ton of mail each day, but at least it isn't copied into every private forum everywhere. Non-commercial, independent, and not monitored by someone who is affiliated with certain companies.

Here's the webpage that tells how to get on the mail list.

On Fri, 06 May 2005 21:45:24 GMT, "Tom in Missouri" puked:

I find it interesting that everyone is all surprised that what is sent in a public forum turns out to be public. Seriously, how does any of this diminish the use of this group or the reputation of its posters in any way?

-- lab~rat >:-) Do you want polite or do you want sincere?

Let's do this in a way you can relate. Pretend you are a freeware software writer. You write this really neat program, maybe an operating system or an office application.

Along comes Microsoft, who instead of working and creating their own, takes yours for free and begins selling it.

Would you be happy?

JLA Enterprises and others are essentially selling our material. Maybe not directly, but indirectly, by selling advertising space on a website that features nothing but our material. If it wasn't for our material, JLA Enterprises would not be getting any advertising dollars because there would be nothing there.

I wrote to JLA and told them what they had done to this group and how reprehensible their practice is. Oddly, I haven't gotten a response from them.

On Tue, 10 May 2005 13:12:24 GMT, "Tom in Missouri" puked:

I understand your point, but you weren't expecting to be reimbursed for any of this from the onset, and clearly this is a public forum. By participating, we have all given anyone our tacit agreement to use the information disseminated here as they see fit.

All of this information is achieve in Google and conceivably someone could write a book with the information from this group, and no one here would have any recourse due to the public nature of usenet.

That being said, perhaps less people would take exception to this deal if JLA came in here and explained what he intended to do, and asked our opinions.

I just hate to see a good forum manipulated by an outside non contributor. This group CAN function as it always has, regardless of whether JLA exists or not.

-- lab~rat >:-) Do you want polite or do you want sincere?

It's my understanding that this is a public forum available worldwide. If I post something, I expect *anyone* to have access to it - forever. If someone posts it on a website in a forum format, I'm sure it's legal & they can get advertisers to pay for their hosting, bandwidth, time, & some profit. If you want your posts to remain your copywrited property, you could always put your responses on your own website & link to it (instead of posting to the group); a copyright notice on the website would be more than sufficiant. Or as someone says you can state that your post is copyrighted material, & may not be copied, reproduced, or published in any way without prior written permission. Then you could probably sue anyone who does so, but I would think you'd get very little compensation other than having your post removed from their website. Maybe if they continued publishing your posts, you could give 'em hell. Any lawyers out there care to chime in? ~ Paul aka "Tha Driver"

If you can't take the heat, get out of the nuclear reactor.

There is a big difference between helping someone for free and having someone take your free stuff and sell it.

someone take your free stuff and sell it.

If you can't take the heat, get out of the nuclear reactor.