John McHarry wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@telecom-digest.org:
Control, absent legislation to the contrary, equals posession, and all the rights and privileges associated with it.
If PT is the only one who can decide who is moderator, then that is something that he can decide to sell, should he so choose. Who can prevent him?
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, some of you newcomers who started reading this Digest since 1993 do not recall -- maybe never even heard of -- the great battle that year over comp.dcom.telecom. There were some people then -- they are still around today -- who do not care for my moderation of c.d.t, thus they began c.d.t.t. as a work around. They were going to have an election for a new moderator and vote for someone else. But one or more of the 'Usenet authorities' (at least at that time it was David Lawrence ['tale'] and Gene Spafford told them they could not do it; the technical reason is because c.d.t. is not actually a Usenet newsgroup. Its origin was as an ARPA (Advanced Research Projects) newsgroup which had been split off from HumanNets and was merely _ported_ into Usenet each day. Therefore the rules which apply to Usenet did not apply to c.d.t. which was not Usenet to start with. And even today, I merely send the Digest over to Usenet as part of the distribution scheme; Usenet is _not_ the reason for my existence. It may sound like splitting hairs, but TELECOM Digest is an independent thing on its own, having been birthed by Bitnet in 1981 and originally just a humble, quite small, text-only mailing list. Usenet people said 'let us look at it'; I started sending it there, and still do, but they do not _own_ it. And that is what makes the difference, and to a large extent makes TELECOM Digest unique on the net. Usenet has looked at it now for so long, they perhaps feel they own it, but they do not. People who read the Usenet-version of this Digest (yes, there are minor differences) will note they are only sent the 'messages' (that is, the dozen or so individual items each day between the top group of eighty dashes and the bottom group of same; never the top header file nor the boilerplate message at the end. They do not get the colorful 'TELECOM Digest' logo nor my picture, nor the links to previous issues, etc which appear on the top and bottom of the 'web version'.I received TELECOM Digest when Jon Solomon _gave it to me_ in the middle 1980's. Prior to him _giving it to me_ I wrote articles here like most of you. I took/still take Jon Solomon's trust in me and my work quite seriously. The person _I_ select (after due diligence and [I would hope] some other consideration) will be at the very least as knoledgeable and concerned about telecom as I have been over the years. Yes, I could be an asshole, highest spam-bidder with the fattest wallet and most consideration takes all ... but no, I won't be, and I hope you all take my word on that. I know some of you consider me an asshole anyway, which is your right, but I hope to whatever extent you consider me to be an asshole, it will _not_ be because I sold the newsgroup down the river. I hope that whomever takes it over from me will consider me worthy to occassionally write articles for it, just as before. PAT]