Re: archiving on inet

[Phil Karn <karn@qualcomm.com>]

>Anyway, people who want to use the law to restrict distribution of
>their news articles are extremely foolish. Your words are out there
>and they WILL be read. Forever. You can't help it. If you find your
>words embarassing, don't say them.

Yeah. You guys should lighten up. You won't be able to keep your posts
off of CD-ROM collections, but you might still have some fun with the
vendors.

The next release of my KA9Q NOS software, prior versions of which have
already appeared on quite a few CD-ROMs, will contain a copyright
notice that explicitly grants permission to CD-ROM publishers to carry
it for free -- on the condition that they send me a free copy of the
disk.

Most already do, as a courtesy, usually when I show up at their booths
at the Dayton Hamvention. My new notice should take care of the
rest. Heck, each one probably costs them no more than a buck to make,
so how could they object? Seems like a win-win situation to me. They
enhance their sales and I build up a nice CD-ROM collection quite
cheaply...

By the way, there's a very good reason why you should *welcome* the
availability of USENET archives on CD-ROM. Imagine that one day you
toss out on the net a clever little idea in the hope that someone may
find it useful. You don't think much of it at the time. Several years
later, much to your dismay, you discover that some slimeball has
stolen and been granted a patent on your idea. You're convinced they
got it from your original USENET article, but how do you prove it?
Simple -- if your original comments were preserved for posterity on a
commercial CD-ROM, complete with silk-screen label showing the dates
of the articles it contains.

Don't laugh - this has already happened to me. Fortunately, I had also
published my idea in a ham radio journal more than a year before the
bogus patent application was filed. But if I hadn't, I'd now be
frantically looking around for 5-year-old USENET archives.

Phil