On Sun, 29 May 2011 Janet wrote:

Contrary to your claim, website forums do not operate the same way as
usenet groups so it's completely misleading to say urg matches the
internet definition of a "forum".

I didn't say that it was an Internet definition. I said that, in a wider
definition, it is a forum. And so it is. A forum is where discussion
takes place.

Usenet is in the
public domain so no theft, intellectual or otherwise, is taking place.

You need to check copyright legislation. If A acquires B's usenet post
and sells it as X's own for commercial gain they have breached B's
copyright in law. And that has happened in this group.

Well I don't know about Garden Alley but Garden Banter is certainly not
selling access to the newsgroups. I haven't subscribed to Garden Banter
but I can access urg without paying.

The more we argue about our "rights" the more these sites will endeavour
to prove that we have none.

Hardly. Authors' rights are what prompted changes in Googlegroups and
Gardenbanter's use of usenet posts.

In the case of urg there's not a chance. People don't have to go via
Garden Banter/Alley, even if they have to pay to get them (which, in the
case of GB they don't). Since urg is available on google groups and
usenet free of charge no-one *has* to pay to receive it.

David

--
David Rance writing from Caversham, Reading, UK
http://rance.org.uk