brad@looking.UUCP (03/25/87)
This is the crux of stargate, and why it isn't covered well under existing law. Stargate makes economic sense because it transmits the same information from 1 author to hundreds, or thousands, of recipients. It can do this efficiently because it uses one broadcast channel to do so. While this broadcast technology is necessary, the information is not being sent to the general public. In addition, stargate does not generate or own the information. As such they seem like a common carrier. What stargate does is, for a fee, move information from one author to a wide range of recipients. So they are a one to many common carrier. If people are free to receive the information without paying an appropriate share of the cost, then the system will not work. If the carrier is liable for the contents of the transmissions, it will have trouble working, too. The real solution is to use a poster-pays scheme with a reverse charges facility. If the poster pays for a message, then it becomes clear who is responsible for the message. Plus there is no problem collecting for the efficient transmission. Plus it discourages people from posting crap just to satisfy their own egos Now a poster pays system, which would have been the best thing from day 1, won't work in today's net. For it to work, each poster would have to authorize possible payment, and most posters will be unaware of stargate mechanisms, and possibly even its existence. A reverse charges (collect) scheme is the ideal solution. In such a scheme, authorized recipients agree to accept materials collect under certain circumstances. The most common circumstance would be, "if it is approved by a moderator I like." Other circumstances could be automated. For example, you could accept anything you like collect, except if it matches certain patterns. Patterns might include "is posted by X" or "contains the word Y" or "follows up article Z". Thus if you post an article, one of the following things must happen: 1) A sufficient number of subscribers must be willing to accept it collect, either because a) It was approved by a moderator, or b) enough people already accept it collect. 2) You pay for the transmission (I guess about $5 - does the Stargate "team" want to work out what it would really cost, both at the artificially low price and with real satellite costs?) 3) The article doesn't go via satellite. Since only a few people (or none) want to read it, it is more efficient to send it by landlines or other means. The above scheme doesn't require that you have an agreement with Stargate. It simply requires that you have one if you want to post articles through the satellite that nobody has expressed an interest in paying for.o Now, recipient customers have to agree to pay for what they receive collect. Collect charges would equal the cost of transmission divided by the number of recipients. It's in everybody's interest to increase the official number of billed recipients, but in nobody's interest to increase the number of official recipients at their own site. For this, people will just have to be honest, or bound by contract into honesty. It's a lot like stealing software. In this case, however, you are not paying for the information. You are paying the sender's transmission bill. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (03/29/87)
Brad Templeton proposes (for the nth time since I've been reading his articles on this network) a "sender-pays" USENET. Brad, you're free to set this up in your own corner of Canada (and if memory serves me right, you *are* Looking Glass Software, and have already done so by virtue of owning your own machine, and presumably paying your own telecommunications costs), but I know of no fool who, all other things being equal, will pay for something he can otherwise get free. Please note the use of that important qualifying phrase, "all other things being equal." If Stargate expects to succeed in paying its expenses, they have to offer something above & beyond basic USENET, independent of the "broadcaster vs. common carrier" question. As long as we've got sugar-daddies in the form of the backbone group, paying the major costs of moving USENET traffic trans- and inter- continentally out-of-pocket, no one is gonna go for a transport that costs real money, and/or appears as a capital expenditure that they can't hide in the phone or other telecom bills. six year veteran of the USENET wars, Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu
ccplumb@watnot.UUCP (03/30/87)
In article <18049@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) writes: >Brad Templeton proposes (for the nth time since I've been reading his >articles on this network) a "sender-pays" USENET. > >Brad, you're free to set this up in your own corner of Canada (and if Hey! We're here, too (ruptime lists 90 machines)! :-) Also: I think a sender-pays Usenet would *degrade* the quality of net traffic. To wit, here are my thoughts: The undesirable postings are the extended flames that some people post. We want to discourage them. The desirable postings (why I read netnews, and would pay for it if necessary) are the informative, well-thought-out ones. Code. Bug fixes. Reviews. Advice. We want to encourage them. These postings take time to compose, and are harder to write than flames. Sometimes (E.g. source), they are longer. Why should a person who doesn't enjoy parading his/her opinions up and down (I refer to those somewhat more modest than myself) *pay* to contribute them? The people who'd pay would be those who most strongly believe their opinions are right, and *that* is the definition of `fanatic.' It would be nice to put all the costs in the right place, but `poster-pays' won't work. -- -Colin Plumb (watmath!watnot!ccplumb) Silly quote: Don't upset the apple pie.
brad@looking.UUCP (03/30/87)
In article <12738@watnot.UUCP> ccplumb@watnot.UUCP (Colin Plumb) writes: >The undesirable postings are the extended flames that some people post. >We want to discourage them. > >The desirable postings (why I read netnews, and would pay for it if >necessary) are the informative, well-thought-out ones. Code. >Bug fixes. Reviews. Advice. >We want to encourage them. > >Why should a person who doesn't enjoy parading his/her opinions >up and down (I refer to those somewhat more modest than myself) >*pay* to contribute them? The people who'd pay would be those >who most strongly believe their opinions are right, and *that* >is the definition of `fanatic.' > -Colin Plumb (watmath!watnot!ccplumb) I don't know how often I can say this. THE COLLECT POSTING METHOD IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF A POSTER PAYS SCHEME. A GOOD FILTER IS ALSO PART. While these systems could be done without if the cost for posting were high (for example, anybody can 'post' to the New York Times if they want to pay the advertising rates. You rarely see flaming opinions, and if you do, they cost enough and so are done well. On the other hand, anybody with something truly interesting to say [in the eyes of the editors] can say it in the letters column. And somebody with something fascinating will actually get PAID to write something.) if you want a cheap poster-paid posting then you need a good collect mechanism. People posting interesting articles (like source code etc.) won't have to pay the cost of sending them. In fact, we might set up a system where the default is that you get to post things collect. Only the annoyances and flamers would get shut out, at the request of the payers. If you want to be a common carrier, you have to take anything that doesn't violate the law, but there is nothing that says that flamers can't be charged for the cost of sending their diatribes. In fact, with a good filter mechanism, you won't see an annoying flamer even if they do pay. That's up to you. Note that we can go further. If people write interesting articles, we can actually PAY them to do so in such a network. An article could be posted with the condition, "to see this article, pay your share of the transmission charges, plus a royalty of 25 cents." For good postings (only from people with reputations as very good posters) you would gladly pay the royalty. Software postings. Valuable reviews and reports, expert consulting etc. Legal advice. The opposite is a little harder. We could set it up so that a flamer or advertiser could pay YOU to read a posting, but there would be no real way to find out if you actually read it, except your word, and too many people would probably accept all the postings they get paid for and just copy them to /dev/null. The result of poster-pays, default collect: Stuff you like is posted for free (or is paid for), you pay a minimal fee to receive it, as the cost is distributed amongst all readers. "Stuff you like" is defined as stuff you have stated you will accept, based on fancy pattern matching on topic, keywords and articles, plus stuff from moderators/editors that you like. Stuff that nobody likes must be paid for by the person who posts it. No censorship, just personal responsablity for what you post. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
david@dhw68k.UUCP (04/05/87)
In article <769@looking.UUCP>, brad@looking.UUCP writes: [Much material, including a quote of article <12738@watnot.UUCP> ccplumb@watnot.UUCP (Colin Plumb) deleted....] > Note that we can go further. If people write interesting articles, we can > actually PAY them to do so in such a network. An article could be posted > with the condition, "to see this article, pay your share of the transmission > charges, plus a royalty of 25 cents." For good postings (only from people > with reputations as very good posters) you would gladly pay the royalty. > Software postings. Valuable reviews and reports, expert consulting etc. > Legal advice. ^^^^^^^^^^^^ ...! It is my understanding that there exist legal restrictions (at least, in some jurisdictions) to the effect that 1) One who offers legal advice for a fee should be admitted to the bar; and 2) such an individual -- as a "professional" -- may be liable for malpractice under some circumstances. CAVEAT: I am a programmer, *not* a lawyer. The purpose of this follow-up is merely to point out that this whole Stargate discussion is sufficiently complicated and confusing (to me, anyway -- though I concede that I may be rather more thick-headed than the rest of you folks... :-) ) that we *probably* don't want to add another level of complexity & confusion. If I have somehow managed to offend someone with this posting, please e-mail (address below). david -- David H. Wolfskill uucp: ...{trwrb | hplabs}!felix!dhw68k!david