brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (03/16/89)
In light of this discussion, and Denninger's prediction that USENET is going to become a pay-by-the-hour service, I think it's worth examining some of the differences between USENET and the pay-by-the-hour services, and see what's good or bad. Both types of services have discussion groups and email of course. Usenet is decentralized, they are centralized. Centralized means that readers only transmit what they want to read, but that each reader transmits individually. Decentralized means everything is transmitted everywhere, but for many groups, the total number of transmissions is less. The online services offer a number of products that USENET can't have, such as online CB/Chat, games and other interactive services, and the ability to maintain large databases and do interactive searches in them. (Some of these things could be done, in theory, over the internet, but may not be practical or legal.) They also offer gateways to things like airline reservation systems. There is a special third class of services worth talking about. That is electronic publishing -- online news services, wires, magazines, newsletters etc. Nothing about a distributed network makes this a problem from a technical standpoint, but the logical structure of USENET (and even Karl's favourite biz.* net) make electronic publishing of anything but free material possible. Some of the magazines, newsletters and news services that now allow electronic publishing are quite worthwhile I think, and often very reasonably priced. You can sign on to services and read them, but I think it's very sad that we can't have them in the USENET way. It's ten times nicer to read electronic information on your own computer, at your own pace, with your own software and your own high speed terminal. It's a pain to have to sign on to another computer to read your email or your electronic news. So far from being an evil thing, as Karl suggests, I think "pay to view" professional information would be a good thing, and I think it's unfortunate that USENET, for all good things it allows, doesn't allow that. The reason USENET doesn't allow it has nothing to do with usenet being a commune, of course. It has to do with the fact that there's no way to control and bill for professional information, even if people were falling overthemselves to buy it. (Of course, "pay to view" information on your own computer does exist today. Associate Press, USA Today an other news services all make money feeding their electronic publications into major mainframes for employees to read, and companies pay for it.) -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473