So much so, that it gave
birth to a protest movement.
Bickering and bad tempered flaming (often bordering on the
deranged, the racial, or the stalking) are the more repulsive
aspects of the Usenet groups. But at the heart of the debate
this time is no ordinary sadistic venting. The issue is: who
owns content generated by the public at large on computers
funded by tax dollars? Can a commercial enterprise own and
monopolize the fruits of the collective effort of millions of
individuals from all over the world? Or should such
intellectual property remain in the public domain, perhaps
maintained by public institutions (such as the Library of
Congress)? Should open source movements gain access to Deja's
source code in order to launch Deja II? And who owns the
copyright to all these messages (theoretically, the authors)?
Google, as Deja before it, is offering compilations of this
content, the copyright to which it does not and cannot own.
The very legal concept of intellectual property is at the crux
of this virtual conflict.
Google was, thus, compelled to offer free access to the
CONTENT of the Deja archives to alternative (non-Google)
archiving systems.
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