Re:Chris' ans to Kate forum on Compuserve

[Chris Williams <chrisw@wwa.com>]

>Hi there Chris,
>
>erm thank you for the erm slightly insipid email

    Do you take exception to my spelling?

>I've actually met you in London at the convention so I wouldn't want to
>argue with you...

    Don't worry. I can argue about a subject without taking it personally.

>I'm just trying to promote Kate on Compuserve..not trying to replace
>Love-hounds at all!...

   Not replace...pointlessly duplicate.

   I stand by what I said. I don't understand the purpose of a Kate
forum on Compu$erve. Everyone on CI$ can access us. Only
people on CI$ can access CI$ content. One is open, the other
is closed. In my view that fairly plainly makes Gaffa good,
and CI$ forums bad (no matter how noble the intentions of the people
involved).

>There's a Tori room on compuserve but apart from the abundance of Kate fans
>no Kate room. And that just drives me mad.

    Good luck on it, but IMO you would do more good encouraging CI$ members
to check out USENET, rather than duplicating effort. There really aren't
enough Kate fans to spread them thinly through various commercial
services.

    That's really the crux. Usenet is free. Gaffaweb and the Love-hounds 
list exist on space donated by our humble pseudo-moderator. Nobody 
is making a profit from it. But CI$ makes money from all those Tori fans. 
That seriously rankles me. I haven't been to CI$ in a about a year. But at 
that time the music forums were an additional charge, if I'm not mistaken. 
Is that still the case?

>Actually i was hoping get some of the stuff for the room from material you
>and Vickie have obtained over the ages..and that would require your
>permission. I'd be very grateful if you could help there.

    As CI$ claims a copyright on *EVERYTHING* posted on CI$ forums,
it would be a very bad idea. We don't have a copyright, and I'm loath to
give it to a profit-making entity that could legally prevent us from getting
it back. I'm serious. An animation program I use, 3D Studio, has a
support forum on CI$. They have sent "cease and desist" letters to 
people posting material on Usenet from that forum.

    We can't prevent you or anyone from copying material from Gaffaweb
and posting it anywhere. But I would annoy me to see the hard work
of all the people who worked on it become the property of a commercial
entity (especially one on very shaky financial ground.) CI$ is the computer 
equivalent of a Roach Motel; content goes in, it doesn't come out. 

   The material was put on Gaffaweb to to share with Kate fans 
*everywhere*. I honestly fail to see why is needs to be duplicated 
on a slower, limited, exclusive, expensive, commercial forum. 
Especially, and I can't emphasize this enough, when it is *already* 
available to all the users of that service. Unless CI$ has started 
blocking the gryphon.com domain, it's as easy to access as any 
other web site.

>About this: >>  It's called IRC<<
>I remember the good old days with the #Ecto channel...what's happened
>there?

    Lack of constant interest, I presume. Vickie hasn't spent much time
on IRC in many months. I imagine it will start hopping the next time
Happy plays a concert.

Chris Williams of
   Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
      chrisw@wwa.com
"How perfectly goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" - C. Crumb