The real reason for "no servers"

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

--------

David Kramer writes:
| On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, John Chambers wrote:
| > Maybe I'm being silly, but it occurs to me that it might be useful to
| > point out that web servers run quite well on other ports than 80.
|
| ... and if everyone I knew was as technical as the least technical person
| on this list, that would be a perfectly acceptable solution.  That is far
| from the case though.  Even writing out http://thekramers.net:8080, it
| would take my parents several tries to get it right.

Yeah; I know what you mean.  I've lost track of how many  times  I've
had to explain to people on the phone how to type a tilde char.  (And
the demographers tell us that between 20 and 25% of the US population
speaks  a language that uses it ;-).  It's a good thing that most web
servers automatically convert \ to /, or it'd be really impossible.

| The other issue, which was mentioned by someone on this list or another
| (the same thread is happening on another list I'm on), was this is very
| likely the camel's nose in the tent.  If they shut down 80 for the purpose
| of catching all those hooligan hackers eating up all their precious
| bandwidth, you know they're going to shut down 20 and 21 to kill ftp, and
| then telnet (like I care), and finally, when they hire an MIT graduate in
| the right position, ssh (EEEK!).
|
| No, when they shut down port 80 on my connection, I will shut down my
| contract with them.

Heh. So you have an alternative available? Most people don't. We're a
bit pampered here in the Boston area.

Some time back, before I was kicked off mediaone, I got a letter from
them  that  listed their restrictions, and they were quite clear that
"no servers" meant  "no  servers".   I  asked  them  if  they  really
preferred  to  use their own machine's resources to store and forward
email, when it could be sent directly to my machine with no effort at
all on the part of their servers. Their answer was yes, they did want
my mail stored on their machines. They wouldn't say why.

Lest we think that being worried about this is paranoid, consider the
fact  that  a  few  months  ago there was a bit of a fuss at MSN when
users discovered that their personal files (mostly images) were being
used  in  advertising.  When asked, Microsoft's answer was that their
contract clearly states that files stored on their machines are their
property.

They did back off from the  practice,  for  now.   But  they  haven't
changed the wording of their contracts. If you go to msn.com and look
up the Terms of Use pages, you'll find that

  You may not modify, copy, distribute, transmit,  display,  perform,
  reproduce,   publish,   license,   create  derivative  works  from,
  transfer, or sell any information, software, products  or  services
  obtained from the MSN Sites/Services.

They ARE talking about their  customers'  personal  files  stored  in
their web areas.  As a customer, you can't give a friend the right to
do something with any of your files; your friends must  ask  MSN  for
permission.

It's highly likely that ATT's lawyers have also figured this out, and
part of their "no servers" idea is that they want you to put your web
site on their machines, where they can then claim  ownership  of  any
file  they  like.  It might be interesting to go over their contracts
and see if this might be the situation now.  I did find this text  at
http://www.attbroadband.com/services/other/TermsAndConditions.html:

  AT&T Broadband Web Site Agreement
  ...
  2. Copyright, Licenses and Idea Submissions. The entire contents of
  the Service are copyrighted under the United States copyright laws.
  The owner of the copyright is AT&T Broadband.  You  may  print  and
  download  portions  of  material  from  the  different areas of the
  Service solely for your own non-commercial use.

This document appears to cover web pages on customers'  personal  web
sites  as  well as the actual ATT files.  Note that they are claiming
that they own the copyright to all material on their sites, including
"Submissions" from others.

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