Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utcsstat.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!utcsstat!laura
From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: The poster should pay for news
Message-ID: <796@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 24-Jul-83 15:24:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.796
Posted: Sun Jul 24 15:24:25 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 24-Jul-83 19:29:46 EDT
References: <5574@watmath.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 132


Brad (& everybody),

I have some problems with this scheme, allow me to outline them.

	What would you do about the people who ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT
have net.jobs forwarded to their sites? They don't care who pays for
it; they just don't want their staff reading it and leaving their
company. I assure you that these folks exist.

	I gather that there are others who feel the same way about
net.philosophy, net.flame and others. they are not worried about
costs, they simply dont want them on their machine.

	What if I decide that I want only certain articles from
net.whatever? Either I personally have to keep a huge list of
which people I am willing to pay for, which I have to describe in
some way (for example, all new submissions, all submissions that
are less than 5 lines long and greater than 0 lines long, , all submissions from sites that are within
80 miles from here, all submissions from the sites unc and ucmp-cs,
everything that mentions 16 and 32 bit computers, nothing that
mentions 8 bit computers, nothing from watmath!bstempleton < :-) >
anything from vortex!lauren and nothing from ucbvax).

	Also at what level do we decide to pay for this? If the
"system manager" decides, then no net.jobs gets through, despite
internal interest. If the individual decides... have you ever got
a huge bill that you weren't expecting?

	there are other logistics problems. When utzoo first joined
the net, many moons ago, the department of Zoology was in the middle
of a huge crack down on long distance phone calls. 3 hour connections
to duke didn't go over very well. In addition, we didnt have an auto-dialer
so every call meant that either Henry Spencer or myself had to babysit
the phone connection. I still chuckle when I hear the auto-dialer clicking
away as it dials out!

After one month, almost everything got the axe. FA.unix-wizards, NET.bugs.all
(yes those were the days of the NET and FA, not the net and fa) remained.
FA.space did as well (by Henry Spencer fiat) but FA.sf-lovers didn't, nor
did FA.human-nets. I remember calculating the costs of both of these
groups and staggering around the department and asking if anyone was
willing to pay one Xth of the cost.

The plan folded for several reasons. First of all, a share worked out
to ~50 dollars a month, and I wasn't prepared to pay that much. Secondly,
the atmosphere changed radically when people thought about paying for
it out of their own pocket.

Some people thought that Henry was being unfair and wanted to chew him
out about FA.space. I cooled them out. other people wanted to pay, but
they wanted the files read only by a group that they were in (at utzoo
we don't use groups for anything, everyone is in their own group, with
the group 'bin' and the group 'uucp' being the notable exceptions) so
that nobody could read sf-lovers without paying for it. 

Some people wanted the lineprinter patrolled so that no one
made illegal copies of sf-lovers to be used by non-payers. I received
a lot of abuse when I mentioned that I intended to run off a line-printer
copy for me to read in class as usual, and that even worse I was going
to run off copies to take and post at csrg and at the physics department
as had been my normal habit.

What I found most frightening was that everybody was willing to appoint
me as facist leader and patroller of the lineprinter. I wasn't interested
in the job of fascist leader. Presumably there are people out there that
can stomach "security checks" and "law enforcement" but I am not
one of them.

I might have been willing to pay something around $50 for sf-lovers,
but I was not willing to be dictator for ANYBODY. I got out of the
"money for sf-lovers" business, and did without sf-lovers until
decvax offered to be utzoo's news feed (thanks decvax!) which was
a shorter hop, (thus a phone saving) and utzoo began to make money
for the department. 

	if we go with payments on the site or individual level, how
do we amortise the costs? If we go with Mike Lesk's scheme mentioned at
USENIX (everybody sends their L.sys information to  ihnp4,
in exchange for getting all the information back) we have gone to an
ARPANET situation where every machine calls every other machine.
(I know that I am oversimplifying, and ignoring the "super
secure" machines which cannot talks to the world at large). This
is fine for people with lots of money from the DoD to make phone calls
with but poorer sites cannot do this. However, we would all know that
ihnp4 could talk to everyone wouldn't we! I see ihnp4 becoming so swamped
with traffic that a vax isn't big enough, especially if Lauren Weinstein
starts selling his uucp to everyone with a micro. 

	Say we do not make ihnp4 the central site. Suppose we just 
leave things as they are (I don't think we can do this forever either,
but ignore this). Now what. If I decide to pay for net.sf-lovers
from ANYWHERE, and you decide the same thing, do you subsidise
my costs, since utzoo will be sending sf-lovers to watmath where
you are if we continue as present? If this doesn't happen, and
each site pays the full cost of transport to that site the
situation for you and I out in the "middle of nowhere" will be
even worse than our current phone bill arrangements. In addition,
where does all the money go?

	If we distribute the costs equally over every node on
the net, the folks far far away (Australia and England for instance)
are in for a price break, unless people in North America decide
not to cover the costs because they don't think that Australia is
worth it. The site that has never had a long distance call
in its life (lucky dog!) is not going to be thrilled at this new
prospect, and once again, we have curtailed access to a resource
to the rich alone. This might keep the micros out of usenet, which
is a good or bad thing depending on your point of view.

What I want to know is: HOW EXPENSIVE IS A SATELLITE CHANNEL?
At some point, it is going to make sense for decvax to pay for a
large chunk of a satellite, since they are already paying a fortune
in phone bills. the same can be said for ucbvax, and Bell as a whole
(though I gather from talking to Lesk Bell has some strange ideas about
what is cheaper and better when it comes to telephone bills).

Existing sites could pay for "their share" of the satellite. New
sites could pay for their share of the new computers needed to do
the crunching to handle their mail.

What do you think, gang?

laura creighton
utzoo!laura utzoo!utcsstat!laura (preferred)

ps Will someone see that Mike Lesk gets a copy of this, and Brad's
	original article? I don't have a mail address for him, and I
	would hate to be misrepresenting him.

	laura