Science Studies 1/2002

Discussion

Commodifying and the Usenet Archive or Continuing the Online Cooperative Usenet Culture?

Ronda Hauben

This article explores the conflict between the cooperative online culture of users who have created Usenet and the corporate commodification of Usenet posts by companies archiving the posts. The clash of decision-making processes is presented through the details of how Usenet users choose to petition a company to provide protection for the public archives it had collected. The company disregarded the petition and the archives were sold to another company. The new company has be- gun to put its own copyright symbol on the posts in its archives. How will such a commodification affect the cooperative nature of Usenet itself and the continuing vitality of Usenet’s cooperative culture? The article explores this culture clash and considers possible consequences.

Keywords: commodification, electronic , usenet

Commodification of knowledge is a ration has made it possible to create the trend in modern societies (Suarez-Villa, and Usenet. Researchers creat- 2001). A close look at individual cases ing these important online developments shows, however, that this process is con- needed the input and contributions from tentious. The transformation of a public as many people as possible. A recent ex- into a private good provokes resistance ample from the Usenet world illustrates by those who contributed to the produc- the tensions and conflicts which result tion of that good. If they are now pre- when corporations become involved and vented from using it free of charge and begin to commodify a public good. from having free access to that good, they Usenet is a worldwide distributed on- may even regard commodification as ex- line newsgroup and discussion forum. propriation. The that pro- Contributions to it consist of short or long duces a public good in science or tech- opinions, comments, articles, questions, nical research is an important process to or answers typed into the system through understand and to protect. Such collabo- computers and then distributed from

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host site to host site until they have been collecting on its own. An article traversed all sites that subscribe to the appeared in “The Register”, a British newsgroup to which they are directed. online publication on February 13, 2001. Each such contribution is called a “post”. The article expressed concern that (Hauben & Hauben, 1997) Contributors had not maintained the Deja are sometime called posters. This article interface and the online availability of examines the corporate archiving of the archive until they perfected their Usenet posts, which then become subject own interface. Subsequent articles on to commodification. These posts are February 14 and February 15, 2001 contributed freely by Usenet users. included comments by the then chief Recently a corporation doing the ar- executive officer (CEO) of Google, Larry chiving has put its copyright notice on the Page, promising that some of the archive posts in this archive. It is unlikely that would be back online in a month and the most contributors have agreed to have rest in three months. their posts archived or to have the copy- There were other concerns expressed right of a company appear on the posts. both by users online and in the online press during this period. Among these A Public Good in Corporate Hands were references to a petition that even- tually contained almost 4000 signatures On February 12, 2001, those accessing and many comments. The petition had the archive of Usenet posts collected and been initiated a few months earlier to archived by the company Deja.com appeal to Deja to safeguard the Usenet (Deja), learned the archive had been archive. After collecting Usenet posts transferred to another company, Google, from 1995 to 2000 and making them Inc. (Google). In a press release an- available online, Deja cut back access nouncing the acquisition, Google indi- from five years of posts to only the past cated that the archive would be made year. Included in the petition were available to the public in a few months. several comments describing the ar- Google said it “bought” the archive but chive as a public good that had some- the price was not indicated. It is likely how fallen into private hands. One that Google expected acclaim for acquir- comment in the petition urged that the, ing the archive from Deja. The archive “USENET archive... should *never* have had many users and Deja was going been in private/ corporate hands... give bankrupt at the time and either selling it to an appropriate educational esta- or auctioning off its assets. blishment” (comment by Brian McNeil). Among those in the online Internet To understand the controversy around community, some users welcomed the the corporate archiving and copyrighting Google purchase and urged patience to of Usenet posts, it is necessary to know see what would develop. There was also something about the origins of Usenet and another response. A number of people of archiving Usenet. The collaborative online were concerned that Google had process was crucial for the origins and taken offline the five years of Usenet posts development of Usenet. A distributed that Deja had collected and substituted form of archiving was developing as a much smaller archive that Google had Usenet developed. The open and collab-

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orative process that marked the develop- Holtgrewe & Werle, 2001). Researchers ment of both Usenet and the Google Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, search engine, which was originally among others at had been part developed as a research project, is a of a broader research project working process that facilitates the development with Project MAC at the Massachusetts and implementation of new concepts in Institute of Technology (MIT). They ex- technology. Cooperation and collabo- perienced the close communication that ration are the processes that generate was possible through the new form of new knowledge and ways of developing programming environment being devel- technical processes. The give and take oped at MIT known as time-sharing. At among researchers in the open process MIT this was originally the Compatible where they share knowledge and prob- Time Sharing System (CTSS), and subse- lems, makes possible ever new devel- quently research was begun to create a opments and improvements. more advanced system called . A proprietary process, is the opposite. AT&T, however, withdrew from the It limits the source of input. This tends to MULTICS collaboration at MIT. Its Bell narrow the development and change to Labs researchers set out to create their incremental changes, rather than quali- own version of a time-sharing system to tative leaps. Eventually a proprietary be used at AT&T. They called their system process freezes what is developed for (Hauben & Hauben, 1997: 131-134). various reasons, amongst which is the Dennis Ritchie, one of the creators of need to realize the profit to pay for Unix, wrote that Unix was created at previous development. When technical Bell Labs by programmers hoping that pioneers are forging a brand new process a “fellowship would form” (Hauben & or technology, they need the input and Hauben, 1997: 51). AT&T (the home of support of all who can contribute to the Bell Labs) was a government-regulated new development. This article will not corporation subject to the 1956 Consent only explore the collaborative process Decree that restricted it to the essential to the development of quali- business. It was therefore not allowed to tatively new technologies like Usenet and commercialise . The researchers the Internet, but it will also consider the at Bell Labs who created Unix were able nature of the efforts to commodify these to make it available to other researchers new developments, such as the archiving and academic institutions for a minimal of Usenet posts by corporations or the fee for the tape. There was, however, no transformation of a publicly funded technical support from AT&T. Unix us- search engine research project into a ers were on their own to solve any prob- private company, like Google. lems. From this situation a community grew up to support each other. They Unix, Usenet, Internet formed an association of academic and research users of Unix called Usenix. Usenet grew up as part of the Unix com- By 1979, UUCP (Unix to Unix CoPy munity. Unix was created in 1969 at Bell Program) was being distributed with the Labs, the research arm of the US publicly Unix code. UUCP allowed computers regulated phone company, AT&T (cf. using Unix to communicate with each

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other over telephone lines. From this maintained an archive of most Usenet context Usenet evolved. Usenet was con- posts through the 1980s. The earliest two ceived in 1979 by gradu- or three years of these posts were made ate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. available online on certain occasions. They were active in the Unix community Increasingly, Usenet was being trans- and wanted to contribute a means to ported via the Internet rather than pre- create an online Usenix newsletter. In dominantly via UUCP and phone lines. collaboration with others, they devel- For a period in the 1980s and into the oped early versions of the Usenet soft- early 1990s, the U.S. National Science ware and explored its capability. In the Foundation (NSF) provided support for January 1980 Usenix meeting, the soft- an NSF backbone for the U.S. portion of ware was made available to those who the Internet. Traffic on this backbone were interested. was required to adhere to the NSF’s Ac- Usenet was a grassroots network. The ceptable Use Policy (AUP) until 1995 users would contribute “posts”. Each when the NSF backbone was privatised post would circulate to other users via (Hauben & Hauben, 1997: 219-220). Usenet software using UUCP. In this way There was an AUP because the NSF the users created the content and the backbone was initially founded and for form of the developing Usenet. It soon many years financed by public funding. spread from the US to Canada, and then The AUP was the means of protecting to Europe and Australia (Hauben & the public interest in the network. The Hauben, 1997: chapters 2, 3 and 10). AUP explained: “(1) NSFNET Backbone An important aspect of the contrib- services are provided to support open uted posts was that they circulated until research and education in and among their expiration date. Each site could set U.S. research and instructional institu- its own date for the expiration of the tions, plus research arms of for-profit posts, but they all expired. Consequently, firms when engaged in open scholarly a user would contribute a post and it communication and research. Use for would be sent out across the globe, but other purposes is not acceptable.” The it would expire and disappear from each AUP then explained in more concrete on the network on different but set terms how this applied in specific situa- dates. tions. For example, with regard to uses On Usenet, the posts would be grouped by the international research commu- according to particular topics in “news- nity, the AUP stated that among the “spe- groups”. A newsgroup like sci.econ was cifically accepted uses were:... (2) Com- the place where a user would post about munication with foreign researchers and an economics topic. News.misc was a educators in connection with research newsgroup about Usenet. By the early or instruction, as long as any network 1990s, individual Usenet participants ar- that the foreign user employs for such chived the posts of some Usenet news- communication provides reciprocal ac- groups. An index was maintained online cess to U.S. researchers and educators.” which provided the addresses of the sites Because the AUP required that the inter- for the archived newsgroups. A Cana- national research community could use dian Usenet pioneer, , the NSFNET backbone as long as net-

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works created in their countries pro- the online community of Usenet users, vided reciprocal communication access, asking them for their consideration of the protection provided to the U.S. re- his proposal. There was extensive dis- search community for non-commercial cussion of the reasons that Horton pro- use of the NSFNET extended to other posed to justify such a change. As a re- countries. The AUP forbade commercial sult of the discussion, the decision was use of these networks except under cer- that the name Usenet should remain and tain specified circumstances that would that Horton’s reasons for a change were serve the research community. not adequate. This was an example of how decision-making can be enhanced Privatisation and the Clash of through an online cooperative process. Cultures Corporate decision-making, on the contrary, is often centralized and fo- With the privatisation and commerciali- cused on short-term goals. It is also of- sation of the U.S. portion of the Internet, ten difficult to have divergent opinions companies like Deja were created which expressed in an unprotected corporate began to archive Usenet posts. Several environment where one can lose one’s users report discontinuing their own ar- position or even job if one speaks in a chiving when it appeared that these way that is not appreciated by senior companies were maintaining a large ar- management. Often the views of all in- chive. Some users, however, did not want volved are not heard or even if they are their posts archived. They were con- heard, they can only take a secondary cerned about the effect on the continu- place to the more immediate profit ori- ing development of Usenet from archiv- entation or fiduciary requirements of ing by private companies. The entities management. In such a situation, as with that have done archiving like Alta Vista Deja and the Usenet archives created and Deja and now Google are private from the contributed postings of users, companies. The decisions about the na- the users have little ability to affect the ture and goals of their archiving activity corporate decision making process. On have been and are under their control. the surface, it may seem an anomaly to This differs from the practice on early have Usenet users write a petition to a Usenet, when the online community corporation. Petitions are most often determined the important aspects to be thought of as being the right of citizens considered when a policy decision was with regard to their government officials. needed (Hauben, 2001). Private corpo- Usenet users, however, accustomed to rate decision-making and cooperative be participants, acted to express their online decision-making represent two views, signing and writing comments in different cultures. For example, in the a petition to the company Deja. The re- early development of Usenet, new soft- quest of a number of users to have the ware was being created to transport archive put into a public repository re- Usenet. Mark Horton and Matt Glickman ceived no response from Deja, the cor- were creating the new software and porate holder of the archive. Horton considered changing the name of What is the effect on the online com- Usenet. He explained his intentions to munity and what are the legal implica-

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tions of the clash of cultures that results public web search engine laboratory, from a private company collecting and those working on the en- then maintaining an archive of public gine were encouraged to create a private and contributed posts? To gain some company, which would become part of grasp of the issues, it is helpful to stress the “black art of proprietary search en- the public origins of the private com- gine technology” that Brin and Page pany Google. Graduate student re- critiqued. The incentives were set by the searchers funded by public research funding agency, the NSF, which at the funds under the Digital Libraries Initia- time of the creation of Google, testified tives (DLI) developed the Google search to the US Congress that the “transfer to engine. In a paper presented in 1998, the private sector of ‘people’ – first sup- Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, who ported by the NSF at universities – worked in a DLI initiative at Stanford should be viewed as the ultimate success University in the U.S., describe the of technology transfer.”1 For the NSF, harmful effects of the commodification Google is the company which provides of search engine technology and empha- “an excellent example of knowledge size the need for public technology re- transfer from NSF investment in peo- search and development. They write ple.” As a consequence, the search en- (Brin & Page, 1998): gine Google, originally created as part of a public research project, was trans- “Up until now most search engine de- velopment has gone on at companies formed into the product for a private with little publication of technical de- company. The private company’s mis- tails. This causes search engine tech- sion “to organize the world’s informa- nology to remain largely a black art and tion, making it universally accessible to be advertising oriented.... With and useful” was generally welcomed. Google we have a strong goal to push more development and understanding But how does this corporate goal com- into the academic realm.” pare with the goal of Usenet users to communicate? They continue explaining their strategy to de-commodify such research: Towards a Commercial Usenet “Another goal we have is to set up a Culture? Spacelab-like environment where re- searchers or even students can propose Usenet was created to facilitate commu- and do interesting experiments on our nication. There is an unwritten agree- large-scale web data.” ment that people who post on Usenet Their plan was to create a public re- are willing to cooperate in effecting that search database as a laboratory for web communication (Hauben & Hauben, search engine research. In their article 1997: 52). Archiving the posts was not they acknowledge the public funding in explicitly intended. It was seen by some the context of the Stanford Integrated users as a means of dealing with people’s Digital Library Project in which indus- contributions to Usenet in a way that trial partners are also involved. differed from their intentions. This may The plan of Brin and Page was not be tolerated as long as the archive can implemented. Instead of creating the be accessed by the Usenet community

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free of charge and without any copyright as a cooperative culture, requires a proc- restricting the use of the archive. In the ess with provisions for public discussion Google archive the posts are initially in- and decision making to determine and dividually presented separate from the then safeguard the public interest. discussions. There is a provision for Already the archiving of Usenet and viewing the discussion, but that is an op- the commercialisation of the Internet has tion not the default. Some users even changed Usenet in subtle ways. In the welcomed archives because they could past diverse views were cherished and help to preserve Usenet’s heritage: the discussion between those with differ- cooperative and communicative tradi- ences was welcomed. If there was any tion of the community. harassment of those with a minority But how long will users tolerate the point of view, other users would speak up fact that their contributed posts are in support of the person being abused. copyrighted by a company? Google is More recently, with the archiving of moving exactly in this direction. Google posts, there is less defense being pro- is no longer only the private holding vided for minority or unpopular views company for a public archive but has on some newsgroups. Consequently, started to put a © Google 2002 copyright there is less interest in these newsgroups notice after each post in its Usenet ar- when the range of discussion is nar- chive. Traditionally under the Berne rowed in this way. Traditionally, Usenet Convention, which the U.S. joined in provided an environment that wel- 1989, users are accorded copyright own- comed differences. This is the treasure ership of their creations, as soon as they that Usenet has provided to users. If ar- are created. Google has not requested chiving interferes with this environment, that users turn over their copyrights to it becomes a serious problem for the Google, yet the company is copyrighting continued development of Usenet. In the posts. Google’s CEO expressed some the past posters would add their ideas concern about the copyright of the posts to a discussion, no matter how brief, of- in its archive. Since Google did not ask ten saying this was their 2 cents. With the Usenet users before its decision to put archiving presenting posts as individual its copyright on users’ posts, it did not works, there is less of an incentive to have a way to take into account users’ make a small contribution. views. If Google does not create a means Usenet has been affected by the ar- for the Usenet community to discuss or chiving of its posts. Some users who to be involved in decisions regarding know about the archiving have chosen how the archive is handled who will be to write “x-no-archive: yes” in the first responsible for safeguarding the public line of the post, with nothing else on the nature of the archive? (Hauben, 2001) line to prevent them from being made Any company declaring that it has the available to others in the archive. Other right to the ownership of these posts, or users, however, do not know about this to buy or sell a compilation of such posts, possibility, nor about the archiving of presents a serious challenge to Usenet’s their posts in general. Usenet itself can cooperative culture. Such actions can be affected in a serious way if the prob- have a chilling effect on users. Usenet, lems that develop with archiving are not

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treated cooperatively and sensitively. http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/congress/ Recently Google has created a place for 106/rc00504sapprop.htm. users to post comments on its web page, 2 After writing an earlier article about the but how Google will respond to these commodification of public goods, I was comments is not yet known. Various de- invited to give a talk, both at Stanford Uni- versity and at Google about the coopera- cisions made by Google in the past differ tive culture which made it possible for significantly from the way Horton made Usenet to grow and flourish. While in Cali- a proposal to users, and solicited their fornia, visiting the Internet Archives input before making a decision that project, I also inquired about the efforts would affect them. There are users who to make a substantial archive of Usenet posts available which was gathered by stress that Usenet is more important than Henry Spencer. Several months later, any archive of Usenet posts and that if the Google announced that they were mak- archiving hurts Usenet, it is a serious loss. ing this archive available on Google. While In the short term, Google may seem visiting Google, I also inquired about whether Google would make a copy of all to be providing a valuable service in the archives it had available to nonprofit gathering and making available an ex- or academic or public institutions. The tensive Usenet archive. But in the long response was that such institutions desir- term – given Google’s copyright policy ing a copy could contact them, but no in- and their method of decision-making – formation has been provided of any fur- ther development in this area. the continued development of Usenet and of the ability of users to communi- References cate is jeopardized. It appears to be es- sential that public entities provide for Brin, S. & Page, L. the safeguarding of the Usenet archive 1998 “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hyper- and of the Usenet decision making proc- textual Web Search Engine.” WWW7 / ess, and that Google learn to understand Computer Networks 30(1-7): 107-117. Hauben, R. the importance of responding to the 2001 “Usenet and the Usenet Archives: The needs of Usenet and the Usenet commu- Challenge of Building a Collaborative nity in a way that they don’t perceive of Technical Community”, Paper pre- as in competition with but as comple- sented at the conference “Innovations mentary to Google. Hopefully, this arti- for an e-Society.” Oct 17-19, Berlin. Hauben, M & Hauben, R. cle will help serve as a catalyst for dis- 1997 Netizens. On the History and Impact of cussion and research in this vein.2 Usenet and the Internet. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press. Acknowledgements Holtgrewe, U & Werle, R. 2001 “De-Commodifying Software? Open Source Software Between Business The author wishes to thank Raymund Strategy and Social Movement”. Sci- Werle for his helpful comments. ence Studies 14 (2): 43-65. Suarez-Villa, L. Notes 2001 “The Rise of Technocapitalism”. Science Studies 14 (2): 4-20. 1Dr. Rita R. Colwell, Director, National Sci- ence Foundation before the Senate Ap- Ronda Hauben propriations Subcommittee on VA/HUD Columbia University, USA and Independent Agencies May 4, 2000, [email protected]

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