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Subject: Important notice from ClariNet on new Distributions, etc.
To: custtech-list@alto.clarinet.com
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 1994 16:51:03 -0800 (PST)
From: Brad Templeton <brad@alto.clarinet.com>
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You are receiving this message because you are the technical contact for
a ClariNet site.  If you are not this contact, please send a message to
audit@clarinet.com and ask that your records in our database be updated.


Recently ClariNet dropped UPI and picked up two new newswires, AP and
Reuters.   This has required a few technical changes of which you may
need to be aware.  These changes were announced in our newsgroup
clari.net.admin, which is the place for official announcements to system
administrators.  As a backup, we are sending this E-mail.   It is important
that somebody at each site read clari.net.admin.  If schedules don't
permit this, please ask to be put on our admin-notice mailing list,
where we will be sending important notes from clari.net.admin.  We'll
tag you for membership in that list if you mail a request to
audit@clarinet.com (this is a human being) to get on the admin-notice
mailing list.

The most important note concerns two new distribution codes, clari.apo
and clari.reuters.  ClariNet has not used Distribution: headers in the
past on netnews, but now we must, to ensure that these feeds do not go
to sites that are not authorized.  In general, all full ClariNet sites
get these distributions, but public access (BBS) style sites do not
unless they make special arrangements.

			**IMPORTANT**

If you have been authorized by us to give a full ClariNet feed to another
site, you should check to make sure they are getting this.  If, like most
people, you have specified "all" or "clari" in the distribution section of
your sys file entry, this is already happening.

Most BBS style sites however, should not be getting this, and if you are
feeding such a site, you should have received word from us concerning their
feed.  If you have questions about who you should be feeding, please
contact support@clarinet.com.  If you are a BBS site and you're getting
articles in these distributions without ordering them, then we ask that
you inform us of this.


Next, make sure that your "ME:" line in your sys file is not blocking
these distributions at your site.  This is particularly important if you
run INN, which is conservative about what distributions it feeds.

--------------------

The clari.net.admin group is where we will shortly be posting our revised
terms and conditions.  The new wires require some changes.  Somebody needs
to read the newsgroup or be on the admin-notice mailing list to be sure
to get new terms and conditions.  Any site that finds the new terms
unacceptable can cancel and arrange a refund.  Contact us if there is
any problem.   There are a number of minor tweaks, however, two important
changes to look for are:

	a) Reuters and AP forbid long-term archiving of their news.
	   All their articles have "Expires:" headers and you are
	   required to honour those, which is the default if you are
	   running ordinary news software.  You can still archive
	   other material that has no Expires: header.

	b) We're going to more strongly insist that you help us in
	   mapping and auditing our network.  A number of our customer
	   sites have not bothered to tell us when contact addresses
	   change, or when user counts increase significantly.  Naturally,
	   our information providers want us to have a good handle on
	   who gets our service and how many people have access, since
	   we pay them based on this.  Long-term failure to respond to
	   our audit checks can result in cutoff of service.  We would
	   also like you to enable sendsys, at least for us, and make sure
	   we have lists of the machines on your net with ClariNet that
	   will respond.
	   
	   For those for whom it is easy, additional help is requested --
	   we would appreciate it if you could run the "arbit" program
	   found on ftp.clarinet.com:sources/arbit.tar.Z to help us
	   measure ClariNet readership on a statistical sampling
	   of sites.   If you have access to ".newsrc" files (even if
	   you have the power to grab them and put them in a common
	   directory for anonymous scanning) you can help.

--------------------

We have a new file "userterms" in ftp.clarinet.com:clarinet_info.  This
file gives the terms of service that apply to users.  You may want to put
it up in whatever area you have for system policies.  You do have a duty
to make sure that your users are aware of the terms on ClariNet that apply
to them, and to discipline them if you are made aware they have violated
them.

--------------------

A "great renaming" of sorts is coming up during March.  The new sources
require a better newsgroup structure, and we're working on it right now.
We'll announce this to you in clari.net.admin with advance notice, and
we'll tell the users in clari.net.announce, and postings in the groups
that are going to change or be deleted.  You'll get a new checkgroups
message made available for you as well.

--------------------

In order to keep our database more up to date, we'll be arranging shortly
to E-mail our info on your to the site administrative contact every so
often.  You can then check the info, and reply by E-mail to say that it's
OK or that it needs some changes.  If you know of some changes now, you
can e-mail to audit@clarinet.com.

--------------------

Now is a good time to check up on the security of ClariNet on your
system.  Check through your SYS file for "clari" feeds and also for
any feeds that send "all" to another site which don't have a !clari after
the "all."  Make sure all such sites are authorized feeds.  Check your
nntp_access file as well to make sure that outsiders are now allowed
"read" access to all newsgroups or to Clarinet newsgroups.

We would appreciate it if you could place the following comment into
your "sys" file and your "nntp_access" file as a reminder for others
who maintain it, or those who may maintain it after you go to another
job.

# This site receives ClariNet newsgroups which are a paid-subscription
# service.  Be careful in altering or creating feeds not to send out
# the "clari" netnews hierarchy to any site not authorized to receive
# it.  Contact support@clarinet.com with any questions.

--------------------

Thanks for going over this note.  It contains a lot of items because it
is our first mailing to this entire list. 

Here are the addresses for you to contact ClariNet:

support@clarinet.com	Technical matters, feeds, network configuration,
			problems.

editor@clarinet.com	Comments on the content.

sales@clarinet.com	Changes in service, new service.

audit@clarinet.com	Updates to our information on you -- site names,
			site size, contact info, addresses etc.

publisher@clarinet.com	Policy, special projects.
