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From: bstempleton@watmath.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Usenet, Inc. -- The Saga Continues...
Message-ID: <5586@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 30-Jul-83 13:18:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.5586
Posted: Sat Jul 30 13:18:41 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Jul-83 23:58:29 EDT
Sender: bstempleton@watmath.UUCP
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 88

Well, I must not be expressing my points well, because there is more
opposition to this sort of company than I thought.

What makes you think that the usenet isn't paying a profit making
organization?  What is the Bell System?

My original suggestion for usenet inc. was to form a company that acted
as little more than a transport mechanism (like phone lines), software
supporter, database maintainer and mail router.  The idea here is that
the usenet inc machines would be on telenet or tymnet so that almost all
sites could reach them by a local call, and the transmission charges
would be reduced by the use of this data network.  This would mean that
as long as the central machines had the capacity, any site could join
usenet for less, and without having to seek a megacorporation for a mentor.

The site would maintain the central mail routing database, and suddenly
mail would become much more reliable and easy to handle.  Sites who connected
to this computer could be only 1 site away from the most central node on
the net, if this is important to them.

At no time have I suggested censorship or control of what flows through
the net by this transport company.

What I have just said could be all the company does.  Since Bell, Berkeley
and Dec in a way have already dedicated machines to unix networking, this
could easily be enough.  But I have also had ideas that can exist on top
of this structure.  I am getting comments (some - some +) on them now.
They are:

1) Using the central company as a base for moderators.  Our net is currently
distributed, and Lauren thinks this is not barrier to moderated groups.
I differ, as I think speed of reply is important.  If the moderator is several
hops away (and some net hops insert delays of days) then it could be a week
before my submitted article makes it back to my half of the net.  This is
the situation we had before we merged the arpanet digests with net groups
at sri.   Something fairly central will reduce this a great deal.  You could
even have alternate routes for messages marked time critical. (You could
do this now, but the massive number of sites involved would make this
a very nasty task)

2) The sender paying for mail.  This is the way just about everything else
works in the communications industry.   As long as you allow people to accept
collect mail, this should not cause too many problems.  It does solve the
junk mail problem.  Done right, the cost for the average electronic mail
message should be less than what the post office charges.

3) The sender paying for news rejected by a moderator.  Again this is
an analog of the real world.  If the editors of a magazine refuse your
story (ie. you can't get the recipients to pay) you can publish it yourself.
A fair bit cheaper on the usenet.  I estimate with current net size we are
looking at about $4 to post a 1K byte article.
Postings where people feel it is obvious the poster should pay would also
be charged in this way.  I refer to commercial product announcements,
job ads, that sort of thing.

4) Active links to other nets and machines.  Usenet inc. would go after
connections to "The Source", "Compuserve", perhaps an official CSnet or
ARPA (unlikely) connection.  Also to the millions of microcomputer users
out there.

5) Links to the postal services.  Currently the post office will accept
electronic mail, print it in a remote city and deliver it for you.
Usenet inc. could provide this link so that you could send postal mail
from your terminal.  This would be a big boon in border crossing mail,
which is usally verrrrrry slllloooooowwwww, not to mention expensive.
Compared to the one-day services, there would be no beating electronic mail.

6) Unix consulting.  In a central position, this company could offer
unix consulting of all sorts, from expert consulting to answering user
questions via fast net mail.  A site without a guru could consider a direct
usenet inc. connection as a substitute for one at a fraction of the cost.

I hope this clears things up.  If this company gets of the ground without
the backing of some giant like AT&T, it is clear that it will only implement
what the most customers want.  That's business, folks.

And now to some of Lauren's points:
1) By "Forbid" in the bill of rights note, I meant that the COMPANY would
not be allowed to do things (like certain forms of censorship, for example),
not that the customers would be barred.

2) You suggest big sites would not connect to further sites because they
have no charity?  How does the net run now, then?

Brad.

-- 
	Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ont. (519) 886-7304