Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pacbell!att!alberta!access!edm!rroot
From: rroot@edm.UUCP (Stephen Samuel)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Cut off AT&T? (Was: The death of USENET)
Message-ID: <3184@edm.UUCP>
Date: 23 Jun 88 11:51:23 GMT
References: <2761@ttrdc.UUCP>
Organization: Unexsys Systems Inc., Edmonton,AB.
Lines: 39

From article <2761@ttrdc.UUCP>, by levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy):
....
> The ONLY THING that AT&T is planning to stop carrying, as best as I have
> heard (there has been traffic on internal AT&T groups about this too) is
> MAIL BETWEEN TWO NON-AT&T SITES.  NETNEWS WILL CONTINUE TO BE CARRIED. 
> The analogous thing for the net to do would be to decline to carry AT&T's
> mail BETWEEN TWO AT&T SITES.  ....  
> So think about it a while before you get sore and start planning "revenge."

Not a complete analog: AT&T is refusing to carry mail routed from outside
the company to outside the company. The difference is that many other
companies exist out there for which "outside the company" is 
"everywhere else" -- thus any mail going.. ihnp4!company1!company2!user
is liable to be bounced by company1 since it is going from outside
company1 to outside company1.
  If you consider this unfair, then transpose att/company1 and tell
me if company1!ihnp4!company2!user would get bounced by !ihnp4?  This
is what a lot of people on this net are wondering about.

Note: to an extent, AT&T is getting picked on 'cause they're such
a big site, but the action as announced does seem a little bit
arbitrary.

If AT&T wishes to cut external mail costs, it might just be better to
reduce the connectivity values on the map entries for their machines 
and stop doing smart-routing to outside sites. This would encourage
both people and smart-mailers to find other paths without getting
them a) up in arms and b) confused  (one-way mail paths aren't
that much fun).

  Not long ago, I realized that USENET fit quite nicely into the
(in)famous maxim "give according to ability, take according to need",
because there is much mutual value to the net.  Part of the problem with
the AT&T pronuncement is that it seems to violate this unwritten rule
which has ensured USENET's existance up to now.
-- 
-------------
 Stephen Samuel 
  {ihnp4,ubc-vision,vax135}!alberta!edm!steve
  or userzxcv@uofamts.bitnet