Copyrights and B5JMS

[B5JMS Poster]

This is a letter from the maintainer of B5JMS.

*** THE SHORT VERSION:

I've had to stop forwarding CIS postings to B5JMS for the past few days, and
was looking for solutions.  Some solutions were found and CIS postings to
B5JMS will resume soon.  There would be some instabilities with respect to
the number and formatting style of JMS messages to B5JMS, which originated
from Compuserve.  These are all necessary in order to comply with Copyright
laws.  It is my hope that in a week or two this will all stabilize and we
could all resume reading and enjoying JMS' messages quietly.


*** THE LONGER VERSION:

I'd assume you've read the recent discussion relating to Copyright
violations on Compuserve, and are familiar with the thread of discussion
which resulted.

The outcome of this is that everyone who wants to take a message from CIS
and post it elsewhere must receive permission from the author of that
message.  In the case of JMS there's no problem, since he gave blanket
permission to post his messages everywhere.  The problem is that permission
must also be received from all of the authors of the individual messages to
which JMS was replying in the first place (and also Compuserve).

In the short term this means that I could only post JMS' messages to B5JMS,
but of course much of the context of discussion is lost that way, and I feel
that the premise of this mailing-list is thusly is not being fulfilled.

Several hard working fans, to which we should all be *very* grateful,
embarked on exactly that arduous task --- asking and receiving permission
from CIS users to post their messages on other forums (such as rastb5,
and/or mailing lists).  I have allowed some of these kind folk to post their
collected digests directly to B5JMS, since they are the ones who currently
hold the permission to repost them.

What you should expect in the next few days are a few digests to catch up
with all of the messages for the past few days, when we all had to stop
sending anything until the Copyright issue was to be resolved.

In addition, since different people are asking for posting permissions from
different subscribers on CIS, it is likely that they have not all received
the exact permissions from the same group of CIS posters.  So, in order to
maximize the amount of information which is provided on this list, I would
prefer to get CIS postings from more than one approved source.  This may
also result in some duplicate individual messages between the different
people who post them.  This is an unfortunate situation, but I believe it is
transient.  I expect it to get better in a couple of weeks as things cool
down and stabilize.

JMS' postings from CIS, including as many messages that he replied to for
which approvals had been received, will resume on B5JMS shortly.

I would like to stress that only the people who received permission from CIS
and their users to post to this list are allowed to do so.  Please do not
forward any message you get on B5JMS to any other forum, no matter where it
originated from (including my occasional maintainer messages).  You must
first receive explicit permission from the authors of said messages.  I
apologize for these apparently stricter measures, but they are necessary if
we want to continue receiving as much information as possible.  (Don't
worry, I don't plan to declare martial law... :-) :-)

Finally, I would like to thank JMS, John Hardin, and Brent Barrett, for their
efforts --- and Compuserve and their subscribers for their re-posting
permissions.

If you have any questions relating to these recent events or the B5JMS list
in general, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you, and enjoy the incoming barrage... :-)

B5JMS Poster.
<b5jms-owner at majordomo.cs.columbia.edu>