rick@pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson) (02/06/89)
In article <19979@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Rob Robertson writes: > >Usenet is pretty much non-commercial, that's the beauty of it and one >of the reasons alot of companies and networks subsidize the transport >of it. Were Usent to become a "commercial network", many sites/networks >would probably consider dropping it. > > ... What people are objecting to is the possibility that >Brad may use a medium (Usenet) that THEY are providing (via connect / >disk costs) to make money. I think that companies believe that Usenet contributes to their bottom line either directly or indirectly. I doubt that many simply consider it an employee perk or a charity contribution. So, in reality, there are a lot of companies that are using Usenet to make money. Nothing wrong with that at all. Blatant marketing hype is frowned upon, but reasonable advertising pass with nary a whimper (The recent Uunet and (every 3 mo.) Telebit announcements come immediately to mind). However, even though few (one?) moderators were ever elected, moderator is sort of like an elected position. Making money, other than a salary, from an elected position is pretty unethical (unless you happen to be a member of the U.S. Congress :-( ). In this case, the Usenet salary for a moderator is a big goose egg. This is something that should be changed. I suggest that the salaries come from a tax on pay access sites and _leaf_ sites that don't pull their own weight. This would include UUNET (note my address), Portal, and others, as well as AT&T and other _leaf_ sites. The moderators would become employees of the Usenet Community Trust (or whatever), and the Compilation Copyright for every group would be owned by the Usenet Community Trust (or whatever). -- Rick Richardson | JetRoff "di"-troff to LaserJet Postprocessor|uunet!pcrat!dry2 PC Research,Inc.| Mail: uunet!pcrat!jetroff; For anon uucp do:|for Dhrystone 2 uunet!pcrat!rick| uucp jetroff!~jetuucp/file_list ~nuucp/. |submission forms. jetroff Wk2200-0300,Sa,Su ACU {2400,PEP} 12013898963 "" \d\r\d ogin: jetuucp
rob@violet.berkeley.edu (Rob Robertson) (02/07/89)
In article <668@pcrat.UUCP> rick@pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson) writes: |I think that companies believe that Usenet contributes to |their bottom line either directly or indirectly. I doubt |that many simply consider it an employee perk or a charity |contribution. |So, in reality, there are a lot of companies that are using |Usenet to make money. Nothing wrong with that at all. |Blatant marketing hype is frowned upon, but reasonable |advertising pass with nary a whimper (The recent Uunet and |(every 3 mo.) Telebit announcements come immediately to mind). First UUNET doesn't make money, they are non-profit. When people do post product announcements to a group it is usually frowned upon, 'cept in misc.products. Technical discussions are an exception, ie comp.sys.sun, these groups are for users of the products. |In this case, the Usenet salary for a moderator is a big goose |egg. This is something that should be changed. I suggest that |the salaries come from a tax on pay access sites and _leaf_ sites |that don't pull their own weight. This would include UUNET |(note my address), Portal, and others, as well as AT&T and other |_leaf_ sites. |The moderators would become employees of the Usenet Community Trust |(or whatever), and the Compilation Copyright for every group would |be owned by the Usenet Community Trust (or whatever). That would be great, hire a couple people just to do billing, a few JCL/cobol programmers for the billing system, some user support positions, a couple of software folk, about 50-60 people to act as paid management and about 300 lawyers to persecute those folk who are breaking the redistribution "rules" or not paying their share. Boy would Usenet thrive. rob william robertson rob@violet.berkeley.edu
dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM (Dennis L. Mumaugh) (02/08/89)
In article <668@pcrat.UUCP> rick@pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson) writes: >In this case, the Usenet salary for a moderator is a big goose >egg. This is something that should be changed. I suggest that >the salaries come from a tax on pay access sites and _leaf_ sites >that don't pull their own weight. This would include UUNET >(note my address), Portal, and others, as well as AT&T and other >_leaf_ sites. > >The moderators would become employees of the Usenet Community Trust >(or whatever), and the Compilation Copyright for every group would >be owned by the Usenet Community Trust (or whatever). > Consider ATT or your local company: In the above case I suspect that the company would drop the feed for all moderated sites. Perhaps maybe one site would get the feed. Either that or pay the fee and demand a person sitting on the board of directors. Also any moderator working for the company would be required to do it on his own time [he's getting paid by someone else]. Alternately they would want a rebate for the money paid the salary. Also they would also want money for all the email in support of the moderation. We might be lucky and have the company consider a moderator equivalent of an editor of a professional journal. Most managers feel that you can do that as well as the 60 hours per week of real work. Do we really want to raise the visibility of the net to a separate budget item for the bean counters to look at? -- =Dennis L. Mumaugh Lisle, IL ...!{att,lll-crg}!cuuxb!dlm OR cuuxb!dlm@arpa.att.com