Science Studies 1/2002 Discussion Commodifying Usenet 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 communication, usenet Commodification of knowledge is a ration has made it possible to create the trend in modern societies (Suarez-Villa, Internet 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 collaboration 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 Science Studies, Vol. 15(2002) No.1, 61–68 Science Studies 1/2002 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 Google 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- 62 Ronda Hauben 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 Bell Labs 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 MULTICS. 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 Unix (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 telephone essential to the development of quali- business. It was therefore not allowed to tatively new technologies like Usenet and commercialise software. 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 63 Science Studies 1/2002 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 Duke University 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.