Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site gatech.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!floyd!whuxlb!pyuxll!eisx!npoiv!npois!hogpc!houxm!ihnp4!we13!otuxa!ll1!sb1!sb6!emory!gatech!spaf From: spaf@gatech.UUCP Newsgroups: net.news Subject: Re: The poster should pay for news Message-ID: <326@gatech.UUCP> Date: Tue, 26-Jul-83 04:46:39 EDT Article-I.D.: gatech.326 Posted: Tue Jul 26 04:46:39 1983 Date-Received: Wed, 27-Jul-83 21:56:33 EDT References: <5575@watmath.UUCP> Organization: Georgia Tech, School of ICS Lines: 69 Time for my $.02 of soap... I believe that if you set up some scheme of charging for news, we would see the development of new news networks. There is no reason to believe that Usenet would survive undiminished -- if at all. The first thing we would probably see would be lots of cities developing their own isolated "islands" of newsgroups, sort of like the regional newsgroups in use now. Some of these "islands" might connect together by links from machines whose operators/owners have access to 800 numbers or the like. I mean, why pay for news when it is possible to get any number of machines together for (nearly) free? What would happen next is that smaller or isolated machines would start dialing into machines in these "island" networks. I'm not sure how the cost would be distributed, but I suspect that it would be done close to the same as now. I suspect that we'd see the net reduced to about 60% or so of current sites, and these would be divided up into 4 to 20 separate or loosely connected networks. In parallel with this development we would see these isolated machines and networks sending mail to each other. Does your proposal include charging for mail transfer? If it doesn't, then I'll just post all of my local net news articles to your network "island" by mail and let you resubmit them there. Since this will be quite a chore for me (and for you) we'll write software to automate this process, and soon we'll have another version of news software running -- which will require more machine resources than the current system. Suppose you charge for individual mail messages. How long do you think the system would last? I suspect that any workable system you would implement would cost so much extra in overhead that it would be cheaper for each individual site to establish their own connections. Thus, we'd end up with each site on the network having huge L.sys files. Your new network would be bypassed whenever possible and as a result would probably not make enough to justify its continued existence. CSNet is using a scheme similar to what has been proposed here. You have to pay dues to join, all of the messages are routed through 2 relay points which connect to other relays, and message traffic is metered and charged for. However, $30K per commercial site is a bit steep, don't you think? And for me to send mail to Emory University, just a few miles away, I have to incur the charges for a call to Delaware, and Emory gets charged for another call from Delaware. Using uucp, it is a local call. Needless to say, most CSNet sites will use uucp if possible. In conclusion, I think that any attempt to charge on a per-message basis will only result in fracturing the network. Some might argue that that could be desirable, but I won't. When you buy a newspaper you buy the whole thing. You may not read the sports section, you may not care about the stock prices, you could probably not care less about the horoscopes -- but if you want to read any of the news, you buy (and subsidize) the whole thing. If we paid our newspaper reporters based on how well we liked their style, or if reporters had to pay to get their stories published, how many newspapers or magazines do you think we'd have? If it was economically feasible, don't you think someone would have tried it already? -- The soapbox of Gene Spafford CSNet: Spaf @ GATech ARPA: Spaf.GATech @ UDel-Relay uucp: ...!{sb1,allegra,ut-ngp}!gatech!spaf ...!duke!mcnc!msdc!gatech!spaf