Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site genrad.UUCP 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