Date: Tue, 31 Oct 95 08:12:44 EST Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator To: Comp-privacy@uwm.edu Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V7#036 Computer Privacy Digest Tue, 31 Oct 95 Volume 7 : Issue: 036 Today's Topics: Moderator: Leonard P. Levine Re: Call Blocking Re: Exon Bill in US Congress Re: Voter Registration Records Re: Voter Registration Records Re: Junk Sales Calls Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Re: Copyright Notice Re: Copyright Notice Re: Copyright Notice Re: Email Addresses for Sale by Direct Marketing Agency Privacy of SSN Telephone Odds and Ends Re: Electronic Road Use Taxes in the UK and Elsewhere Info on CPD [unchanged since 08/18/95] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: prvtctzn@aol.com (Prvt Ctzn) Date: 28 Oct 1995 13:45:59 -0400 Subject: Re: Call Blocking Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) WELKER@a1.vsdec.nl.nuwc.navy.mil writes: The telco default is to publish your number cuz most want their numbers listed. So long a the telcos charge folks to get their number unlisted, we do not know if the person wants the number listed or not. But we do know that having an unlisted number is an economic issue. Furthermore, in some areas of the nation more folks are unlisted, than listed. So in those areas (Las Vegas - Fort Lee, NJ - etc.) the default is unlisted Since telcos have to do something special to "turn off" your listing, the added labor can be passed on to you, not to mention cost of lost revenue from not being able to sell your name, which would otherwise show up on everybody's phone bill (a fact that the phone company will surely have reminded the UTC of). Under Amertiech in the Chicago area, it costs $12.50 to change your listed number to unlisted. If there `was' anything `special' to do (other than a single key- stroke), the $12.50 paid for it. What then is the addittional $1.45 per month `unlisted' charge for? Now, with charges for calls to directory service in place, their is no reasonable basis to charge consumers for an unlisted number... unless it is reasonable that the telcos be allowed to use vaporous rationals to soak the public an any fashion conceivable. Better than an unlisted number, list your number in the directory under your first and maiden, or first and middle name, and ASK YOUR TELCO TO REMOVE YOUR ADDRESS FROM THE BOOK.. Robert Bulmash Private Citizen, Inc. 1/800-CUT-JUNK ------------------------------ From: shabbir@panix.com (Shabbir J. Safdar) Date: 28 Oct 1995 13:50:43 -0400 Subject: Re: Exon Bill in US Congress Organization: Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw@vtw.org) g4vegeta@cdf.toronto.edu (Me) writes: Does anyone know when the US congress is going to vote on James Exon's Communications Decency Act (or if they've already voted)? I'm doing a critique on it and I wondering if a decision has been made yet. The bills (there's four different versions of net-regulation on the table) are now being considered by a conference committee as part of the larger Telecomm Deregulation bill. You can learn more about this by checking out the BillWatch, a publication of the Voters Telecommunications Watch, at http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/ Try issue #22. ------------------------------ From: prvtctzn@aol.com (Prvt Ctzn) Date: 28 Oct 1995 14:11:46 -0400 Subject: Re: Voter Registration Records Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Robert Gellman writes: "Access to voter registration lists varies considerably among the fifty states. About half restrict access to or use of voter registration records. California is a restrictive state, allowing disclosure to candidates, to researchers, and to a few others. " Concerning California voter registrations - Earlier this year it was learned that a major player in the list sales industry recently acquired a copy of a California voters registration list, and in order to update and add more demographic information to it (thereby increasing its markatability) the firm did a bogus ice cream survey, junk calling those on this list with insipid questions about their family's ice cream consumption. Interspersed, were questions as to family size, income, ages, sex, education levels.... the works. What the firm did was both illegal and unethical. When the firm was questioned about thier behavior they responded by saying: `people would not give us the info we needed if we told them the truth!' By the way, the subject firm is a m Direct Marketing Association member... in fact, its CEO was on the DMA's board... Kinda makes ya wonder.... WHAT'S THE DMA ALL ABOUT... REALLY! Robert Bulmash Private Citizen, Inc. 1/800-CUT-JUNK ------------------------------ From: bo774@freenet.carleton.ca (Kelly Bert Manning) Date: 29 Oct 1995 05:48:30 GMT Subject: Re: Voter Registration Records Organization: The National Capital FreeNet, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada During the last provincial election voter list disks were stolen from a candidate's office, while computers and software were left alone. I found out that a data extractor had obtained my name and address from a fiche copy of the voter's list after I obtained a Judge's Order compelling him to disclose his source. He purchased it from Election's BC 5 days before BC's FOI/POP law received final passage. Before I got the court order he had claimed to have obtained this from Municipal property records. Something that isn't possible because no such records exist(a provincial agency keeps the records for all property) and because any such request would have been logged under a municipal bylaw that was enacted before the provincial law. I have since received confirmation, after an 11 month delay and initial attempt to brush me off with a bill for software development and processing costs, that this same data extractor pulled my property assessment and land title registration records after getting my notice of claim. They were not able to check the records quickly, even though I gave them the name of the individual involved because the computer ID he used had a different name associated with it due to a "registration error". Without the intervention of staff at the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner I'd probably never have received the access audit trail details. This seems to have a way to go before individuals can easily and quickly learn who has been pulling their files. While Elections BC is attempting to restrict lists to electoral purposes only there seem to be some difficulties. The tracing of car licence numbers by anti-abortion zealots seems particularly problematic because they have a "family heritage" provincial party and are entitled to receive a copy of the list for the whole province, sorted by voter name. There is also the issue of fringe parties and candidates. At the small claims settlement conference the guy who pulled my name off a voter's listed commented, in what I thought was not entirely an idle manner, of forming his own party if he couldn't get a copy of the voters lists from candidates as part of junk mailings he would be doing for them. Perhaps he could just volunteer and take a few diskettes along. How much care goes into checking campaign volunteers(apart from Ross Perot's efforts along this line). So far we don't seem to have a provincial counterpart of the "Christian Heritage Party" or it's clones, which seem to see nothing odd about displaying a party symbol consisting of a cross stylized to resemble a nazi swastika, but we have recently seen many examples of fraud and coverups from both parties that have controlled the government for the past 40 years. Elections BC no longer provides free copies to libraries or colleges, as it did in past years I personally don't see why there is any need to disclose addresses or specific voting areas. If someone has a concern about a particular individual being a voter they could contact the registrar of voter and challenge the voter to appear at the registry with documentation. If they reach a pre-set limit of challenges without finding any fraud they should be told to find something more productive to do. The main issues are that people who choose to vote should only vote once, and only in the district where they reside. The first concern can be addressed by an all province list, without disclosing addresses(apart from the province). The second could be addressed by my challenge proposal. At least 1 party(NDP-self identified as "social democrats") makes a point of going after people who don't seem to be on the list because they imagine that people who move often are of a lower socio-economic status and would be more inclined to buy what they are pitching. Even making a point of staying off the list seems doesn't seem to be enough to be left alone, although it does seem to lower your chances of being summoned for jury duty. ------------------------------ From: fyoung@oxford.net (F Young) Date: 29 Oct 1995 22:53:45 GMT Subject: Re: Junk Sales Calls Organization: North Norwich Telephone haz1@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Bill) writes: 1) Instead of making "*67" an option for blocking your line from transmitting its ID when you make a call, make NOT transmitting ID be the default behavior in all cases, and provide a code like "*67", which you must dial at the start of a call if you DO want to transmit your phone number to the person receiving the call. I second this! For those who have unlisted numbers, *67 would only be used to call those who block calls from anonymous callers. ------------------------------ From: "Bill McClatchie" Date: 26 Oct 1995 05:53:19 +0000 Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Organization: the Twilight Zone mikeb@ssd.fsi.com (Mike Bates) For what it's worth, Deja News doesn't archive alt.*, soc.*, talk.*, or any of the binaries groups. I would say it does, considering that I found many posts made solely to groups like alt.bigfoot, talk.abortion, and alt.flame - along with several cross-posted from these groups to the groups like soc.women At first I thought this was odd, perhaps just a strategy to eliminate junk from the database. It also provides a way for eliminating most of the controversial groups from the database and from an author's profile. They also carry a great deal of local groups which are supposedly not world readable. Which releases a great deal of strange, silly, and nasty messages that the original poster had no reason to think would be shown outside of a "small community". When I post, I am well aware that my posts are going to be around for a long time - and this is the reason I have an account at Netcom with my real ID hidden from world view. And a search of small local only groups will turn up quite a few. One such group being netcom.shell.test - a non-world readable group where people post some really bizzarre things at times, nasty remarks and flame the IX.netcom.com posters there for a wide variety of reasons with no holds barred. Not something i would expect to ever be in the public eye - yet it is now with no warning that it could or would be. And I found several other local groups listed (no cross-posts) with similar types of material. Talk about blindsiding. ------------------------------ From: chip@unicom.com (Chip Rosenthal) Date: 28 Oct 1995 22:35:22 GMT Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Organization: Unicom Systems Development, Austin, TX I think there are some strong parallels between the concerns over the DejaNews service and CLID (often called Caller ID). In both cases, an expectation of privacy evolved, and many people came to depend upon it. The privacy existed because the technical tools didn't. Once the phone company figured out a way to deliver the calling party's number, or another company figured out a way to store and search large numbers of news articles, the privacy no longer was there. That's troubling because we've grown to expect it to be. I'm highly ambivalent about both of these developments. It concerns me that the privacy that I've always known is gone. But the new services they provide can be useful. What's clear is all of these sorts of developments will force me to change my behavior. For instance, with a service such as DejaNews, I would never consider "de-lurking" in a sensitive newsgroup. I would use an anon remailer instead. Here is a suggestion for people who want to keep a posting out of their DejaNews profile: change your From: address. Recently, I wanted to make a posting to rec.music.misc, a newsgroup I do not carry. To do so, I telnetted to my ISP and posted from there. I added a Reply-To: with my normal address, but the From: pointed to an address at the ISP. DejaNews recorded the message according to the From:, thus it does not appear in my profile. Many news clients allow you to modify the From: address, so you could do this without having accounts on other machines (as I did). PLEASE, however, if you futz with the From:, put a usable Reply-To: in the message so that people don't waste time composing responses that bounce. (Or just use an anon remailer.) -- Chip Rosenthal I won't represent the US in the Summer Olympics. Unicom Systems Development - http://www.unicom.com/john-hiatt/ PGP key: http://www.unicom.com/personal/chip.html ------------------------------ From: tburgess@uoguelph.ca (Todd W Burgess) Date: 29 Oct 1995 18:21:19 GMT Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Organization: University of Guelph I think the DejaNews site was not a question of if there would be such a site but when would there be such a site. I have always been suspicious that anything I posted might be archived and resurface in the future. So its always been my policy never to post anything I wouldn't want my mother to read. I don't think compiling statistics on Usenet is anything new. I imagine various organizations have been doing it for years. I think DejaNews big thing is its the first Usenet database available to the general public. No longer is Usenet statistics and storage limited to big organizations with big budgets and a security policy which ensures their private databases remain private. I think the whole Dejanews issue isn't about the storage of Usenet articles its about the possibilty that what you post publicly may be used against you. I know the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) have been quoted as saying that they do "monitor" certain newsgroups. Which I don't think is a bad thing. If somebody was to state on national television that they molest children I think the general public would want the police to investigate the individual. Just because the person posts it in alt.sex.pedophillia doesn't mean they should be immune to criminal prosecution. Usenet is a lot like television. If you wouldn't want to say it on television then you shouldn't say it on Usenet either. Both are public forums and both could be used against you. EMAIL : tburgess@uoguelph.ca URL : http://eddie.cis.uoguelph.ca/people/tburgess/tburgess.html LOCATION : Universty of Guelph MAJOR : Computer Science ------------------------------ From: brown@altair.krl.caltech.edu (C. Titus Brown) Date: 29 Oct 1995 20:38:01 GMT Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Organization: Avida Artificial Life group Bill McClatchie wrote: And the profile could show someone as posting to groups like the alt.pedophilia.* groups, and quite possibly they won't have the article you followed up to which had a "unusual" follow-up line. Something like that ought to look good on a quick check of what you do online. Which highlights an interesting question: are there any restrictions on the sources of information that a company can use in "checking out" a potential/current employee? I'm not sure if it's practical or even feasible to try to legally limit a background check by big companies, but I wonder if any companies have a hiring policy about this sort of thing. Cheers, P.S. Being a first-time poster, I went and looked at the FAQs available from this newsgroup in one of the archive services. I was kind of surprised not to see something on my question..? -- Titus Brown, brown@krl.caltech.edu. ------------------------------ From: ehunt@bga.com (Eric Hunt) Date: 29 Oct 1995 16:19:11 -0600 Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Organization: Lil' Ole' Me Jay@Mindspring.com (Jay Harrell) wrote: don't care to know. I realize it's a hell of a lot easier to track stuff down when it's computerized and on the Internet, but really I think that the answer here is for people to not post what they don't want others to read. Thanks for the comments. Almost everyone who replied to me said basically the same thing. I find that depressing. What needs to happen is for netnews technology to evolve into something beyond that with the idea of having some expectation of privacy (ie prohibiting either through agreement or technology the archiving of discussions) or to improve the technology for dealing with mailing lists (which already have an expectation of privacy) so they are easier to use. I, Internet citizen for 5+ years now, to this day find mailing lists annoying as hell and only subscribe to the bare minimum. Deja News clarified their position with me, and it's not what I wanted to hear. Through several messages, they basically told me that this purge of my entries was a one time and one time thing only and that anything else I post to UseNet would continue to be indexed and archived. As a final note, they ignored my request for what their position was on moderated newsgroups where the moderator claims a compilation copyright that either directly or indirectly (through the comp. (c)) prevented the archiving of that newsgroup. -- Eric Hunt __ ehunt@bga.com (preferred) Austin, TX \/ hunt@metrowerks.com ------------------------------ From: fyoung@oxford.net (F Young) Date: 29 Oct 1995 22:53:37 GMT Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Organization: North Norwich Telephone Eric Hunt writes: I'd welcome any comments public or private on my arguments. Is the reality of UseNet completely different from the banners and net.guide documents, or am I being completely silly for assuming there was any expectation of privacy when posting to obscure newsgroups? I don't know if any newsgroup should be considered "obscure", the local ISP carries over 8000 newsgroups, some of them will likely never be touched. But there are probably lots of people using them in other areas. I consider anything I post to Usenet public, just as if I were writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper. Deja News is archiving news opening, how do we know if our government(s) or other organizations are not doing it secretly? On the other hand, I oppose to using information obtained from usenet postings for marketing purposes. But can we stop that, or is it too late? Everytime we send in a registration card for a piece of tool, equipment, software, etc. Our names and addresses are put into various databases, then bought and sold around the world. ------------------------------ From: ajm@mcs.com (Alan Miller) Date: 29 Oct 1995 23:58:23 -0600 Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Organization: Bob's Bass House; We Got Bass! I took a look at it, and overall I expect to find it more useful than not. This lets me do on a larger scale things that I've in the past been limited in, such as searching for information on doing X in VB, etc. I did fire off a quick letter to them mentioning the privacy concerns that many people have, along with a couple of suggestions to reduce those concerns, but I think the most effective way to do that is to start using anonymous remailers or semi-anonymous/pseudonymous accounts. The suggestions were: 1) don't plan on adding mailing lists other than those going to bit.listserv groups to the database (see response below) and 2) consider supporting a field in the article header such as "X-NoArchive: ", where the only relevant factor is the presence of the field, and it prevents archiving of the posting. This doesn't stop followups, but that would be a _much_ more difficult undertaking. No response on this one. The response on mailing lists was: (extracted from email) >If and when we end up archiving mailing list posts, we'll certainly make >sure the recipients of such gated lists know explicitly that their posts >will find their way to our database. We believe that mailing list >correspondents have reason to be informed that their lists are being >archived in a searchable index, unlike with UseNet where it's pretty well >known that posting is world-wide publishing. -- Alan Miller \\ ajm@mcs.com AJM's WWW page ------------------------------ From: Adam Barclay Date: 30 Oct 1995 18:49:12 +1100 Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News "Bill McClatchie" wrote: And the profile could show someone as posting to groups like the alt.pedophilia.* groups And for a variation on a theme, it might be interesting to see the reaction of Deja News staff should anyone forge posts to questionable newsgroups in their names. At the very least it might let Deja News users know how worthless and inaccurate the service can be. -- Adam Barclay | adam@troll.elec.uow.edu.au | Twice the Caffiene ------------------------------ From: George Demosthenes Nickas Date: 30 Oct 1995 16:53:17 GMT Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Organization: DejaNews Eric -- Since you quoted me, I thought it best to clarify and expand on a few things. Upon learning from this discussion group of the Author Profiles available to anyone with a web client at Deja News (http://www.dejanews.com), I investigated. Sure enough, they had their database engine compile a summary of all the newsgroups I had posted to. At that point, I used their mailto: form to politely but firmly request that they remove me from their database, as I felt it was an invasion of my privacy. I received a response from George Demosthenes Nickas, Customer Liaison (demos@dejanews.com) that basically said "OK, we'll remove you, but didn't you realize that by posting to UseNet you opened yourself up to something just like this. We have no sympathy." Untrue and misquoted. There is a difference between not having sympathy for someone and not believing in the logic or validity of their arguments. Our position is certainly the latter, but that doesn't mean we don't care about your argument specifically, or privacy/anonymity arguments in general. We *do* care (which is why, as a courtesy, we removed the text of your posts), we just don't agree. I received another response this morning from Steve Madere, madere@home.dejanews.com (I deleted his original, so I don't know his title) that was even more to the point, and he quoted numerous net.guide documents and the banner from the tin newsreader, where they all remind you that you should be aware of the implications of posting to possibly controversial newsgroups. Steve Madere is president and owner of DejaNews. As he mentioned, it does seem that the various extant documents on what posting to UseNet entails support our viewpoint. The documents overtly assume, from various perspectives (network resources, propriety, etc.), the amazingly wide distribution of articles posted to UseNet. I'd like to include my full response to your quoted email as I think it contained a few salient points about our privacy stand (first level of quotation is your email): ------------------------ You are not providing a responsible service. The potential for discrimination and harassment, as well as targetted direct marketing is now infinitely easier with your service. By virtue of its entirely unmanageable size, UseNet was essentially a "private" place. Just as you can move to New York City and do *lots* of things that absolutely no one will notice, you could post to weird and potentially sensitive areas on UseNet and no one would be the wiser. But if someone notices a person on a street or in a dark alleyway in New York City and tells everybody about the weird things she's done (which is not even *close* to what we do), can she reasonably get mad at them and call them irresponsible? I think that's really the key issue here. Because someone has had the semblance of privacy in a public place, it doesn't mean that privacy is their right or even to be expected. I believe that, given the evidence of what UseNet is (DejaNews or not), it is not logical to posit any expectation of privacy there. Private, communicative venues on the Net exist elsewhere. I really believe that the kind of communication you describe would be best accomplished via private email, (non-gated) mailing lists and IRC which is not, as far as I know, logged anywhere. My sense of UseNet is that people like it *because* it's public, and restrictions on that public nature would only hurt UseNet. I don't even have that much of a problem with being able to get lists of posts a user makes. The scary part is the Author Profile that provides the Executive Summary of where a particular user frequents in UseNet. To clarify, the profile doesn't summarize what they *read*, only where they say what they say in the "crowded room" of newsgroups (this analogy is from one of the UseNet FAQs). --------------------- Obscurity is only privacy de facto and shouldn't be taken as any kind of guarantee. As I mentioned above, our contention is that all of UseNet is, by reasonable standards of observation, a public discussion forum. Just because you were able to post relatively unnoticed does not mean that this is your right. We do care that you are concerned, it's just that it seems like you are "shooting the messenger" here. I encourage you to check out "A Primer on Working with the UseNet Community" at: http://www.smartpages.com/faqs/usenet/primer/part1/faq.html Since the existence of DejaNews will affect UseNet, I would really like to see some more discussion on this topic, and toward the end, we'll be creating an alt.* newsgroup for the debate, as well as adding a discussion of our view on this issue to our pages. George D. Nickas -- &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& & George Demosthenes Nickas | D E J A N E W S & & Customer Support Representative | & & demos@dejanews.com | *The* Tool for & & | Searching USENET! & & Reply to ---> help@dejanews.com | & & ---> comment@dejanews.com | http://www.dejanews.com/ & & ---> bugs@dejanews.com | & &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& ------------------------------ From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 30 Oct 1995 11:35:15 -0600 (CST) Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Eric Hunt writes: I'd welcome any comments public or private on my arguments. Is the reality of UseNet completely different from the banners and net.guide documents, or am I being completely silly for assuming there was any expectation of privacy when posting to obscure newsgroups? Except for one thing, and that is that the Copyright owner is the original author and s/he has the right to reserve publication even though the material is widely available. Thus, if I post something with the caviat "not for commercial use" or some such logo, I have the right to restrict those who wish to use my material for gain. In the case of Deja News they clearly intend to do this for profit and wish to use my postings as the source of that profit. They do contribute value in that they organize the postings but they then deliver as a product my work for their gain and without my permission. By the way the compilation of names in some order, like the phone book has been shown to be insufficient value added to allow for copyright. -- Leonard P. Levine e-mail levine@cs.uwm.edu Professor, Computer Science Office 1-414-229-5170 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Fax 1-414-229-6958 Box 784, Milwaukee, WI 53201 PGP Public Key: finger llevine@blatz.cs.uwm.edu ------------------------------ From: crowdog@crosslink.net (Erik Rensberger) Date: 31 Oct 1995 02:28:27 GMT Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News Organization: The_Squiredom "Bill McClatchie" writes: And the profile could show someone as posting to groups like the alt.pedophilia.* groups, and quite possibly they won't have the article you followed up to which had a "unusual" follow-up line. Something like that ought to look good on a quick check of what you do online. Mike Bates (mikeb@ssd.fsi.com) wrote: For what it's worth, Deja News doesn't archive alt.*, soc.*, talk.*, or any of the binaries groups. At first I thought this was odd, perhaps just a strategy to eliminate junk from the database. It also provides a way for eliminating most of the controversial groups from the database and from an author's profile. I've seen a couple people mention this--that Dejanews doesn't cover alt.* groups--but I have FOUND alt.* articles in the indexes returned. It's a bit hard to figure out just how this thing works; sometimes relatively recent posts in high-profile ngs don't appear, while much older comments in more obscure places do. But DON'T think that the alt.* hierarchy or any other hierarchy is specifically not covered! -- crowdog ------------------------------ From: Christopher Stacy Date: 29 Oct 1995 01:09:55 -0500 Subject: Re: Copyright Notice les@Steam.Stanford.EDU (Les Earnest) My understanding of the copyright law is different -- that the copyright belongs to the person who first puts "copyrightable" material in a permanent form, such as a paper copy or a magnetic recording. Simply posting an article on Usenet does not meet this standard. According the U.S. Code 17, the Copyright Act of 1976 (as ammended 1988 and 1993), copyright protection automatically exists for any original works of authorship ("words, numbers, notes, sounds, pictures, or any other graphic or symbolic indicia") that are fixed in any form ("written, printed, photographic, sculptural, punched, magnetic, or any other stable form") of expression, "now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device". The disks on which USENET articles are stored certainly falls under the above. But even if you were to consider a posting a "broadcast" like a TV show, those are copyright protected, too. Also, you don't lose your copyright by giving thousands of free copies away. Nor (unlike trademarks) do you lose your copyright by not aggressively defending it. Finally, things are only in the public domain if the copyright holder has explicitly labeled them as being so. ------------------------------ From: shields@tembel.org (Michael Shields) Date: 30 Oct 1995 04:47:29 -0000 Subject: Re: Copyright Notice Organization: Tembel's Hedonic Commune Les Earnest wrote: My understanding of the copyright law is different -- that the copyright belongs to the person who first puts "copyrightable" material in a permanent form, such as a paper copy or a magnetic recording. Simply posting an article on Usenet does not meet this standard. Why not? Usenet is recorded on magnetic media. I think the line of reasoning that would apply to DejaNews is: 1. You own your own words. This is well-established, and I'm sure it would extend to Usenet. 2. By posting them to Usenet, you grant a license (using the Newsgroups and Distribution headers) to all Usenet sites to store and duplicate and make accessible that text, in the context of Usenet. I think you can make a strong case for this; reason demands it, or Usenet would be illegal. 3. DejaNews is part of Usenet, so this general license applies. This is the crux. I don't know exactly what would define a Usenet site, but I ca'n't think of any criteria DejaNews doesn't meet. -- Shields. ------------------------------ From: Christopher Stacy Date: 30 Oct 1995 09:07:27 -0500 Subject: Re: Copyright Notice Les Earnest seems to be suggesting that the owner of the disk drive upon which the first copy is fixed is the owner of the material, and that the the copyright holder is not necessarily the author. I don't agree. Copyrights are held by the author unless the author explicitly re-assigns them. It does not matter who owns the wax or magnetic disk, typewriter, piece of paper, printing press, or bound pages of a book, because we are protecting the words, not the medium. If you let me use your typewriter or disk drive so that I may author some material, I still own the copyright, unless we were engaged in a "work for hire" contract that covered that particular piece of work. ------------------------------ From: fyoung@oxford.net (F Young) Date: 29 Oct 1995 22:53:41 GMT Subject: Re: Email Addresses for Sale by Direct Marketing Agency Organization: North Norwich Telephone prvtctzn@aol.com (Prvt Ctzn) writes: What's important is that you remember, most all of this `ethical' crap that the DMA feeds to us and our legislators is public relations fluff. I don't get a sense that the DMA believes it, so why should you believe it... or rely on it. What I do when I receive junk e-mail is I'll forward the whole message back to the originator (in case the return-path was one of those nobody@nowhere.com, I'll forward them to an address in the body of the message) with a line that says "Please remove my address from you mailing list." If enough people do that, perhaps they'll change their mind. :) ------------------------------ From: WELKER@a1.vsdec.nl.nuwc.navy.mil Date: 30 Oct 1995 08:20:40 -0500 (EST) Subject: Privacy of SSN wrf@ecse.rpi.edu (Wm. Randolph U Franklin) This one is for the people who don't think that it hurts to let your SSN be public. It is from the Albany Times Union, Wed Oct 25, page B-4, POLICE BLOTTER: Bethlehem, 2:23 pm. IMPERSONATION: Someone used complainant's son's name and SSN to obtain a MC/V card from Citibank... When the application was checked, fraud was discovered. Victim also learned the same person illegally used his SSN to get a Discovery card.... Son's name and SSN can be easily obtained without regard to what measures he has taken to secure it. There are several issues of interest: 1. SSN cannot be secured, because it is the only identifier unique to living individuals that is readily portable. Paradoxically, SSNs are not unique (much to the distress of those who wrote their company's employee database twenty years ago). 2. Possession of SSN and name (and address...) should not be (though is) sufficient to obtain credit. I go so far as to suggest that credit card "activation" be accompished by physically verifying the ID of the card user at some location (bank/retailer) and having a photo on file before allowing use of the card. 3. Strong encyption could also help in this area. ------------------------------ From: Robert Ellis Smith <0005101719@mcimail.com> Date: 30 Oct 95 12:48 EST Subject: Telephone Odds and Ends I'm curious why people would want a service that automatically blocks out any incoming call that has Call Blocking. Aren't there going to be occasions when family members and others call - perhaps in urgent situations - from phones with Call Blocking? What kind of an ordered life do these people have that they do not anticipate that a child of theirs or a spouse or a fellow employee might want to reach them from a stranger's telephone that has Call Blocking? And isn't CALL TRACE a much more effective way to handle harassing calls than Caller ID? I'm curious why a person who objects to paying for unlisted service doesn't simply ask for his or her ADDRESS not to be listed (which costs nothing), if this meets his or her needs. Or why doesn't he pay a few more dollars a month and get a second line w ith a DISTINCTIVE RING? This second line (which is listed in the name of a fictitious family member) can be the private line, which is disclosed only to a few friends and family. If it is never used for ordering products, the telemarketing calls will dw indle. The first line can be the public line, which the person uses on all credit and employment applications, pizza deliveries, check-cashings, etc. etc. The person answers the public line only when he or she feels like it and only when prepared to dea l with strangers. Peter B. White asked from Australia whether any law prohibits passing on Caller ID information. The Federal Communications Commission's regulation on Caller ID, which has the force of law, requires businesses to use information from Caller ID - or its lo ng-distance equivalent, Automatic Number Identification (ANI) - only internally, and not to disclose it for commercial purposes, unless the telephone customer affirmatively consents. -- Robert Ellis Smith/ Privacy Journal/ 401/274-7861 ------------------------------ From: Dan Tebbutt Date: 31 Oct 95 16:03:34 Subject: Re: Electronic Road Use Taxes in the UK and Elsewhere [If any RRE reader in the UK obtains a copy of the report mentioned here, I'd love to get a copy. Also, I have been hearing about public resistance to electronic road taxes in the Netherlands as well, and I'd appreciate any documentation or other leads on this topic. Finally, if anybody is informed about the privacy aspects of the newly announced Singapore system for electronic road taxation then I'd much appreciate references, clippings, etc. Thanks a lot.] I also believe that Premier Jeff Kennett's Liberal (=conservative) state government in Victoria, one of the states of Australia, is planning to introduce an automated traffic debiting system some time soon on new freeways in Melbourne. I don;t have more info, but I am sure someone from Victoria could help. I noticed on the testimonials there was someone@deakin.edu.au which is in Victoria. They might be able to help. The entry point for Australian govt Web servers is http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/ozgov.html which may lead you to some info on VicRoads. Rgds DAN :-] ------------------------------ From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 18 Oct 1995 13:55:25 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Info on CPD [unchanged since 08/18/95] Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the effect of technology on privacy or vice versa. The digest is moderated and gatewayed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy (Moderated). Submissions should be sent to comp-privacy@uwm.edu and administrative requests to comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu. This digest is a forum with information contributed via Internet eMail. Those who understand the technology also understand the ease of forgery in this very free medium. Statements, therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt and it should be clear that the actual contributor might not be the person whose email address is posted at the top. Any user who openly wishes to post anonymously should inform the moderator at the beginning of the posting. He will comply. 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