stargate@stargate.com (06/08/89)
There seems to be considerable misinformation floating around in the current discussion regarding Stargate. In particular, we DID NOT restrict our subscribers from redistributing articles they received from stargate that originated on Usenet. In the early days of the project, we openly (on Usenet and elsewhere) discussed various potential operational structures, and of course one of the possibilities discussed was to control redistribution (since that's the most common model: most commercial information providers and wire services prohibit redistribution). In fact, there are a number of very large mass-oriented commercial online dialup "information services" currently operational who routinely gateway Usenet articles into their "discussion boards" (along with other sorts of stuff) and apparently have at various times taken the point of view that redistribution of any material from their "boards" is not allowed by their subscribers. Anyway, some Usenet readers apparently mistook open discussion and early speculation to be an operational decision. In fact, our decision was NOT to restrict the redistribution of Usenet material in any way. Our subscribers were always free to redistribute the Usenet material we transmitted. One of our hopes had been to pay professional people to moderate much of netnews so we could have many more moderated streams for people who preferred them. But most of the people we talked to who could do this felt that they should be paid on a per-subscriber basis, and they wouldn't agree to do it unless we agreed to prohibit redistribution of the newly moderated digests. Since we didn't want to prohibit redistribution, the paid moderators idea was not implemented. Similarly, we were interested in bringing non-Usenet information streams onto stargate, but the information providers we talked to insisted that redistribution would have to be prohibited for that information. We determined that it was not practical to fulfill their requirements while still maintaining open redistribution for Usenet materials. Once again, since we didn't want to restrict redistribution of Usenet materials, the non-Usenet information streams were not pursued. By the way, even though we never restricted redistribution, we had a filter which looked for articles containing any kind of copyright notice and didn't transmit those articles. Given some of the complex copyright notices that some people were starting to use on some articles, that seemed safest. The bottom line: Stargate never restricted the redistribution of material we transmitted. Some reasons why the project was ended, in no particular order: 1) We had chosen to use vertical interval technology since that would allow people without their own dishes to receive the data by cable over Superstation TBS, without requiring technical cooperation by the cable companies. This technology is more expensive (both from the transmission and reception side of the circuit) than subcarrier technologies. While dishes have been coming down in price, the logistics of installing them can be a real problem for many locations and organizations. Any technology other than vertical interval would have required either that people have a dish or require each cable company to install special equipment in their headends to support the data transmission. The latter is an expensive proposition to say the least, given the way most cable companies operate. Unfortunately, over time, we were becoming increasingly disenchanted with the decoder hardware the carrier supplied us with (they were the sole source for the equipment, which was tied to their proprietary transmission system). We received enough DOA decoder boxes that needed replacement that it was becoming a problem. 2) The economies of transmission for non-time-critical data such as Usenet articles was rapidly changing due to the increasing use of Telebit Trailblazer modems to bring down dialup transmission costs. While satellite transmission still makes sense for more time-critical sorts of information, it would not appear that the sort of simultaneous immediate reception provided by satellite is necessary for Usenet articles. 3) The carrier we paid for the data uplink was partially purchased by a large cable conglomerate, and another chunk of it was purchased (and shut down) by another entity. The end result was that the carrier told us that they would have to discontinue the data service we were using within a relatively short period of time. The cost of switching to a new carrier with similar attributes, which would still entail switching to all new transmission/reception hardware, would have been completely prohibitive. Once the carrier notified us of their impending shutdown, combined with the other factors discussed above and a polling of our subscribers' feelings about switching systems, we decided that the time had come to plan the clean termination of the project. We kept things going until the money from the subscriber fees had run out, and the project came to an end at the time the carrier pulled the plug on the transmission system at the uplink (we used the small emergency reserve fund we had to continue services to the subscribers well past their original subscription expiration dates without asking for any additional money from them--this kept all the subscribers activated, even though subscriptions had officially run out, right up until the carrier pulled the plug). It should be added that all of us donated our time to stargate, and had only our direct stargate expenses reimbursed. We operated on a no profit basis. The entire project was an experiment, and we purposely limited subscribers (we never had more than 10) since we weren't sure about the long-term viability of the overall hardware system. With that few subscribers, keeping our costs covered was quite difficult, given the costs associated with running the uplink equipment in Georgia, paying the carrier and telephone companies, and all the other associated costs that occur even when all the people involved are donating their time. But we didn't want to bring in more subscribers (even though we were constantly being solicited by people who wanted to join) since we felt that as an experiment it needed to be of limited size. We didn't have any plans to make big bucks from the system. We were hoping to evolve the system into something that just about anyone could afford to use whether or not they had a dish, as long as they could get TBS on cable. We were hoping to bring in lots more moderated material and all sorts of material from non-Usenet information providers. But it became obvious that the hassles involved would be overwhelming, so the experiment was ended. But there were never restrictions on redistribution of material received from Stargate. The Stargate Team
karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) (06/10/89)
In article <128@stargate.COM> stargate@stargate.com writes: >There seems to be considerable misinformation floating around in the >current discussion regarding Stargate. In particular, we DID NOT >restrict our subscribers from redistributing articles they received >from stargate that originated on Usenet. Thank you for clarifying what is a _very_ common misconception. My question has to be this -- if you didn't have this policy, what was the uproar all about? Was it a simple misunderstanding? If so, it was certainly a widespread one. -- Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl) Public Access Data Line: [+1 312 566-8911], Voice: [+1 312 566-8910] Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"