Re: Internet commerce mtg, Denver

["Robert A. Rosenberg" <hal9001@panix.com>]

At 13:00 9/9/95, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
>the rep told me something interesting: he said that every
>Bell phone book is actually "seeded" with dummy names
>so they can detect copyright infringers. if you come out
>with a business directory, these Bells will just scan for
>the fake names that they have inserted into their own listings.
>if they find them, supposedly they can show them to a copyright
>judge and he will immediately close down your operation and
>fine you, almost no questions asked. I didn't know how much
>of this really happens (the legal stuff sounded questionable
>to me) but it is an interesting "real world" instance of
>copyright terrorism prevention that the "information liberation
>front" would have to contend with.

This is standard practice with (snailmail) mailing lists. When you buy a
ome-time-use mailing list, there are always names in there to detect resale
or reuse of the list. There are people whose job it is to scan the junk
mail they get and report when they get mail to specifically encoded names
(which would indicate that the mailing list has been reused or merged with
another list without permission).

I see nothing wrong with doing something similar with Phone Books (and I
seem to remember reading that has been done in the past).