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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!john
From: john@genrad.UUCP (John Nelson)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: The poster should pay for news
Message-ID: <3451@genrad.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 30-Jul-83 20:51:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: genrad.3451
Posted: Sat Jul 30 20:51:27 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 1-Aug-83 07:04:26 EDT
References: <5574@watmath.UUCP> <2063@alice.UUCP> <5306@mcvax.UUCP> <532@grkermit.UUCP>
Organization: GenRad, Bolton, Mass.
Lines: 36

Here's  an  alternative  system:  The  basic  right  to post
articles  probably  ought to be free, but  there is a lot of
junk being  transmitted  to  hundreds  of sites.  Here's the
idea: anyone  submitting a stupid or  inappropriate  article
is FINED  for mis-use of the net. :-)  A stupid  article  is
defined as anything  that is  prohibited  in the  nettiquite
(sp?) article that is (supposed to be) required  reading for
anyone using USENET. The money from fines is collected  into
a general  fund which can be used to help defray the cost of
phone bills of certain  backbone sites (for instance the usa
<-->  europe  link) The amount of the fine could be based on
the length of the article in question,  and the newsgroup it
is  posted  to  (certain  sites do not  recieve  some of the
groups)  and should be  proportional  to the actual  cost of
sending  that  article  around  the  world. (By the way, has
anyone  attemted to figure out the actual cost of submitting
a single news  article? I'd be EXTREMELY  interested  in the
results!) 

Maybe  if the  scheme  catches  on, we  could  also  apply a
penalty to boring,  banal, or just plain dumb  articles. I'm
not sure  how this  would  work,  but I think  some  sort of
scheme  where  people can "boo" an article  they don't like,
and any article  which  recieves  more "boo"s than a certain
threshhold is fined! :-) 

Not only would this  scheme  help  maintain  some of the net
links  about  to fail  because  of phone  costs,  it  should
actually  reduce  the  number  of  articles  that we have to
wade through to get at the interesting ones! 


John P. Nelson  (decvax!genrad!john)
GenRad    MS 96
37  Great  Road
Bolton MA 01720