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
rob@violet.berkeley.edu (Rob Robertson) (03/16/89)
In article <2951@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: >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. you can! talk to rick adams... see if you can set up "private pay per subscription" newsgroups. have your "clients" phone up uunet and get a pay per view newsgroup. you can bill, and you don't have intermediate sites footing the bill for communication costs the sender or recipient should be handling anyway. you can use the regular News/rn software to read it. (isn't it wonderful some people don't charge for their software, unlike other people do for their jokes. 1/2 a :-). or if you can't convince rick with enough silver, you can get your own machine. the only problem i can think of is how you prevent the receiving site from secretly passing on (if that is a concern). rob
sl@van-bc.UUCP (pri=-10 Stuart Lynne) (03/17/89)
In article <21716@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> rob@violet.berkeley.edu (Rob Robertson) writes: >read it. (isn't it wonderful some people don't charge for their software, >unlike other people do for their jokes. 1/2 a :-). > I think it's worth pointing out that at least some of the "free" software floating around the net was done by people working under government contracts, and as such couldn't be sold. Only given away. -- Stuart.Lynne@wimsey.bc.ca {ubc-cs,uunet}!van-bc!sl Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532
rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) (03/21/89)
>I think it's worth pointing out that at least some of the "free" software >floating around the net was done by people working under government >contracts, and as such couldn't be sold. Only given away. This is a bit misleading in a couple of ways. The first item is, "what software"? There's FLEX, the BRL emulation package, OOPS -- all freely redistributable. The person who posted the above article hasn't been able to recall what he's thinking of, either. The second point is that just because something doesn't have a copyright, that doesn't mean that it can be given away. Several government agencies charge exhorbitant fees for the software, and will only give it to you if you agree not to redistribute it. You can make a case that this is morally wrong, if not downright illegal, but good luck: interested parties might want to get a copy of Macsyma from the Department of Energy, or any software out of NASA's COSMIC and send it to for publication in comp.sources.unix. /rich $alz -- Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net.