From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!ucbvax!C70:info-cpm Newsgroups: fa.info-cpm Title: Some Answers Article-I.D.: ucb.1096 Posted: Sun May 16 03:25:54 1982 Received: Mon May 17 00:33:13 1982 >From FJW@Mit-Mc Sun May 16 03:25:43 1982 1) Is it legal for someone on ARPANET to communicate with someone not on ARPANET? My understanding of the situation is this: as long as one of the parties in a message exchange is an official user of the net (with all that entails), they may communicate via the net. What this means is that two end users who are not on the net themselves may not go through the net to communicate "directly" to each other and thus circumvent normally tariffed common carriers. The analogy that may be drawn is that of voice communications using either of the two major government networks, FTS and AUTOVON: off-net to off-net calls are expressly forbidden and enforced - the originating end must be on that service. However, conference calls may be initiated by one of those on-net users and the conference may contain any mix of on-net and/or off-net parties. By extension, mailing lists sponsored by an official user of the ARPANET for official reasons, may be considered as a non-real-time conference call. INFO-CPM is such a list. 2) Is it legal for someone on ARPANET to act as a gateway for sending files from ARPANET to other nets? Since mail is but a special form of a file, the same analogy applies. 3) Is there ANYONE, in the entire land of ARPA, who is willing to send some of the files from MIT-MC to someone who will act as a distributor for non-ARPA people? There is nothing terribly special about these files - i.e., they have all been culled from the various RCP/M systems around the country. You can do the same by calling them direct - in particular, Keith Petersen's system (313-759-6569, ring-back) - or take advantage of the recent offer that Keith just redistributed which also includes several files (mainly the games) that are not available on MC. We are also looking for some Unix site on the net to volunteer temporary space into which these files may be FTP'd from MC and put onto tape, and thence made available to any off-net site that has the space to act as distributor of the tape and/or the files themselves. It is not reasonable to burden either this net or the other nets with mail traffic of this volume - i.e., to the list in general. However, I believe that we can try to arrange to send the new files by netmail to the contact(s) who volunteer to use these files to keep their tape derived collection current. For the handful of you who have NorthStar Quad drives: send me a plastic box of 12 disks with a SASE, and I will copy my collection of about 3.5 Mbytes of SQueezed files culled from MC and copied to your disks and send them back, as-is, no guarantees - no charge. 10560 Lakewood, El Paso, TX 79925. 4) Is the software at MIT-MC truly public-domain, or is is it only public to those who have ARPA access? All these files must be public domain or they are not acceptable. However, the authors of certain programs have made them available with certain retained rights, such as free distribution for private use, not for sale, get revisions back to the author or some common redistribution point, etc. Those files are so noted in their source, or implicitly by a copyright notice. All the files in the MC:CPM; directory have been made available purely for the convenience of those who already have access to the net. There is no obligation to make these files available to others, just as you have no obligation to turn your system into an RCP/M just because you have some public domain files. Likewise, MC has no obligation to grant an account for the purposes of gaining access to these files; they are available by other means as indicated above. This is strictly a volunteer activity on the part of MC and the people who help maintain the files. This does not mean we will not try to help and cooperate within the means available as described above. --Frank