stargate@stargate.UUCP (06/06/87)
This is a very long message.
It is certainly true that this group has become considerably more
amusing lately. But there's nothing necessarily wrong with that.
Of course, as should be fairly obvious, we certainly do not have the time to
generate voluminous responses for every message that might appear in this or
other groups relating to Stargate. To do so would leave no time for
real work. There are some people who feel that reading and posting netnews
is the best use they can put to their time--but many other people
don't fall into that category.
First, a few words about information services in general. There are
a variety of companies providing data of different sorts under different
conditions and at widely varying rates. In general, the lower the price
the more "mass-oriented" the data will be. As the data gets more
"valuable" and "directed," the price tends to go up (and restrictions
on what can be done with the data may become more significant).
One example is the cable service recently mentioned in this group that can
provide certain newswire-type data. The presence of severe usage restrictions
(no archiving nor redistribution in ANY form) and per-reader charges are
an example of the sorts of factors that can enter into the picture when
"valuable" data is involved. The particular example represents a
sort of service that is very different from Stargate (and from Usenet
in general). Their goal is to provide primarily a one-way service.
They take bits and pieces (headlines, summary items, etc.) from a
variety of newswires and edit them together into essentially an electronic
magazine. The resulting "magazine" is very much oriented toward the general
public (as are most cable services). Despite some discussion of the
possibility of accepting some public submissions for transmittal over the
service, it is clear that they plan to carefully limit and edit any such
submissions and that sanitized newswire excerpts would continue to be the
bulk of the transmitted information. Their primary goal is to provide a
general information service for the masses--this is very different from
the primary goals of fostering multi-way discussions and communications
on Usenet and Stargate.
Among the major problems with services that (unlike Stargate) require
the active technical participation of each cable company is that
the participating cable companies must install special equipment at each
involved headend--many of which service only a few 1000 subscribers.
To justify the efforts, and any involved initial and recurring costs, the
cable co. must feel that in some way their revenue will be enhanced. Cable
co's (referred to as ccos in the remainder of this message) are rapidly
becoming a financial and even a political power of immense importance. Since
their rates were deregulated recently, and since they are now increasingly
free to put whatever THEY want on their cable systems, without regard to
community interests, many have either drastically raised rates,
restructured their systems (often dropping free channels in preference
for pay channels), or both. Those that haven't done so yet are most
likely planning such actions fairly soon. Some ccos have already
dropped "local" stations in order to make more pay services available--
with one of the popular "drop" targets being PBS stations. This
sort of trend will accelerate as the deregulation process continues
over several years. Since there is usually no "local" competition for cable
companies (other than home satellite dishes), deregulation will have
a variety of negative effects on the cable subscriber in years to come.
The upshot of this is that most cable companies are increasingly interested
in pay services, not basic services. And if a cable company seems to be
offering something for nothing, one must be exceptionally careful
to avoid being suckered down the line.
On the technical and operational front, one can depend on the general
rule that if the cable company needs to install special equipment
to provide a service, it will be less reliable than a service that
didn't require any special actions on the part of the cable co. to
support it. As for whether or not anyone really expects to get an
informed answer out of a cable company about whether they are liable for
this or that service under such and such conditions--well, rest assured that
they generally have no idea what you're talking about but will give you an
answer anyway, regardless of whether it is correct or not.
The big money for the ccos has been and continues to be in the movie
services--and that's where they continue to put most of their local
resources (and increasing amounts of their channel capacity).
The deregulation of the cable companies is one of the "sleeper" stories
of the 80's--that is, it is a BIG story that hasn't really broken into
the public consciousness yet. When it does, stand back!
----
Stargate chose the transmission technology it did primarily to avoid
the problems of needing to have cable company involvement with special
headend equipment just to pass our data. By using the WTBS vertical
interval, our data becomes available in the vast majority of locations
where WTBS can be received, without any special actions or special
headend equipment normally being required of the local cable companies.
The data is in the vertical interval and normally can be expected to pass
through most cable companies' systems directly to our subscribers.
For people who can't get the data from WTBS on cable, the satellite
equipment required can be of the relatively inexpensive home dish
type--avoiding the need to rent specialized satellite gear for
spread-spectrum type systems.
Stargate is not restricting the distribution of materials passed through
from Usenet. Any non-Usenet-origin data that we may add to our data
stream may (or might not) be restricted in some manner, depending
on the situation--including arrangements made with and the desires
of the entities providing such data. This seems only fair and proper.
Of course, it is up to each Stargate subscriber to decide to what
extent, if any, they wish to redistribute Usenet materials that
come through Stargate. It is certainly the case that if such
redistribution is on a large scale and sufficiently depresses the
number of subscribers, the existence of the service could be
threatened. To the extent that the number of subscribers is
low, we are forced to set higher rates to those subscribers than
would be the case with more subscribers. Our goal is to be able
to LOWER the per-subscriber rates as the number of subscribers
grows. More subscribers means that we can spread the relatively
fixed costs of the data broadcast operations over a wider base,
and so individual charges can be reduced if we get enough subscribers.
This is one of the big advantages of this broadcast technology over other
methods for disseminating data. Most other technologies require the addition
of substantially more and more equipment (modems, ports, CPU cycles, etc.)
as the number of subscribers rise. Stargate doesn't face this kind
of scenario.
A few words about moderators and mod/unmoderated groups. This message,
and thusly the following, is not a legal opinion or advice, but it is based
on a careful survey of a variety of information and discussions with informed
persons. Who is liable for the information distributed in netnews articles?
If material is transmitted that is illegal (e.g., obscene material under one
or another state law--they vary widely, or stolen credit card numbers, or
libelous material, or what have you...) who is responsible? The answer is
that nobody really knows. Such issues are worked out on a case by case
basis in the courts, and there are no applicable cases that can be
used as reference. However, several points seem fairly clear.
First of all, any liability that may (or may not) be involved with any
given site, service, or moderator relating to any given material
does not appear to change based on the mode of transmission.
Whether the material is sent around by phone by 1000's of
sites, transmitted by a packet network service, or transmitted
by Stargate is unlikely to make any difference. The key is the material
itself, not the manner in which it is passed around. In conventional
environments, the entity ultimately held liable for "bad" material would
normally be the author of the article in question. However, Usenet
introduces a problem--there is no way to authenticate an article author
on Usenet. Articles can be trivially forged or otherwise handled in
manners to obscure the origin. There is essentially no way to ever
prove who wrote a given article that originated on Usenet.
So what happens when someone (be he or she a private citizen or
a governmental entity) gets upset over a particular Usenet article
and goes to court to try get relief? Who do they go after?
Nobody can prove who the author is. In a widely distributed Usenet,
it is very difficult to find an entity to target. However, as soon
as an organization sets itself up as a "central" point
specifically for the distribution of netnews articles (particularly
if they are charging for the service) they have created such
a target--themselves! Some have claimed that by saying that a service is
simply passing through all material and "has no control" over the material
(e.g. a common carrier) itself that they are protected from liability.
This appears NOT to be a viable argument in the case of netnews-related
services, particularly services which (unlike communications carriers who
simply set up point-to-point connections between two customers) would be
themselves storing netnews materials and acting as a distribution point
for such materials directly to their subscribers.
Given no way to authenticate the author of an article, courts
are not likely to simply tell the plaintiff,
"well, you see, the company that sells the service that collects and sends
the articles out set things up so that they couldn't control it,
so I guess you're out of luck since we can't find anyone else to
blame." A much more likely outcome is that the service would first
be requested to police the material and remove objectionable
items before sending them to subscribers. If the service
refused to do this, the probability of an injunction to terminate
the service, probably under "public nuisance" statutes, would
seem quite possible. Simply declaring yourself a "common carrier"
does not yield protection from this sort of scenario or suits.
The courts are going to find someone liable in such situations.
If the author cannot be proven (and possibly even if they COULD be
proven) and the service being paid to collect and distribute the offending
material refuses to control the material (e.g. moderate!) then the odds are
high that the service will find itself in a very complex situation and could
find itself shut down, regardless of whether or not the author
of the original article could be authenticated.
Of course, even an operation that was moderating materials might
occasionally have an article slip through that could cause a
problem. But in those situations the operation could at least
demonstrate that they had been acting diligently to try avoid
such a situation, and that they weren't taking what the court
might view as an "irresponsible" attitude toward the materials.
Such a demonstration of diligence can be crucial!
The bottom line--moderation of materials is very important,
for a variety of reasons, ranging from maintenance of article quality
to the other sorts of considerations discussed above. Stargate has chosen
moderation of its transmitted materials for these reasons.
---
We can't help but find it to be somewhat ironic that some
persons consider Stargate to be a problem for Usenet. Stargate is an
operation oriented toward keeping our rates as low as possible and
without any goals for making big money from transmitting Usenet
articles over Stargate. We know the Usenet community, are part of the
Usenet community, and want to help that community deal with a variety
of problems that have been growing increasingly complex, both
quantitatively and qualitatively, over a long period of time.
As we grow, our goal is to offer a variety of services that expand beyond
the world of netnews. For example, we are exploring non-Usenet
information providers (including discussion conferences and a variety
of other information entities) for transmission over the Stargate system.
Since each Stargate satellite/cable subscriber site is connected essentially
fulltime directly to our satellite/cable uplink, we can take advantage of
this "leased-line" sort of connectivity to provide a range of
"time-sensitive" and other sorts of information as we evolve. Since our
transmissions are sent toward all subscribers simultaneously, the range of
possibilities is quite vast.
Our view has emphasized quality over quantity. Some will disagree with
that view--they are welcome to do so, but we have reason to believe that
many persons and organizations are in agreement with our orientation
in this area.
Stargate Information Services is also providing other services for the
Usenet community at large, including to those sites who are not
Stargate satellite/cable subscribers. These non-satellite/cable
services currently include the work related to the central coordination
and domain database maintenance for the UUCP Zone, and we hope to also
offer services that would assist conventional Usenet sites to find local
mail and/or netnews feeds in their area and thusly help to optimize netnews
distribution and reduce costs for the entire network. Obviously we'd like to
see as many sites as possible become Stargate satellite/cable subscribers,
but we realize that many sites will be unable to do so and we'd
like to use our organizational resources to help optimize local connectivity
and the topology of conventional netnews connections for the benefit of the
network.
---
Oddly, while some persons have generated flames about Stargate, it is
only recently that we've seen any discussion of the large commercial
services who apparently routinely take Usenet messages and make
them available to their large subscriberships at a premium price,
apparently also claiming copyright on those Usenet messages in at least
some cases. Those companies have vast numbers of subscribers and
make real money from those subscribers! And it also appears obvious
that there are smaller operations who run systems which charge
(on some basis, be it flat rate and/or connect time) for access to
news feeds. Perhaps the reason people have flamed about Stargate is
that we've been the most visible to this community--that many people
on Usenet are not aware of how widely Usenet messages are distributed
by various organizations.
It's not our place to assert whether any other given service should
or should not be doing something commercially with Usenet articles.
But we do want to point out that compared with most of those other
operators Stargate is a small service oriented toward helping the
Usenet community, with our goal being to keep the costs involved,
and thusly the subscriber rates, as low as possible. The technology
we're using is uniquely suited toward this goal.
We are using the 6 month experimental period, which commenced on June 1,
to help determine the long-term viability of Stargate, and to help us,
through our experimental subscribers, to evolve the services in an ordered
and meaningful manner that will help serve our subscribers and the
community at large.
We hope this very long message addresses most of the issues that we've seen
discussed in this group recently. As always, your questions
or inquiries, via direct email to
stargate@stargate.com
{cbosgd,uiucdcs,rutgers}!stargate!stargate
stargate!stargate@rutgers.edu
are welcome.
The Stargate Team
Mark Horton
Steve Morenberg
Mel Pleasant
Einar Stefferud
Lauren Weinsteinwebber@brandx.rutgers.edu.UUCP (06/07/87)
I particularly enjoyed your long informative article. It is much easier to digest such information when presented in such a format rather than when mixed among alot of articles over a long period intermixed with contradictory comments by other people. It is with great sorrow that I contemplate the probability that a month from now that information will be lost to the net. I wonder if you have contemplated the possibility of regular repostings and updates? Or perhaps having it collected with the normally regularly reposted material such as The Most Frequently Asked Questions postings. Such material is particularly valuable when it comes from entities setting policies that can have substantial impact on Usenet. You speak of ironies that you have observed. I too find it ironic that none of my many postings on news.stargate ever elicited a mail message or news posting directing me to get information from the stargate@stargate address. Although at one point I did actually track down an address for a person who sent me some mail thinking that I knew all about stargate. I believe it was Spider Robinson who said that if a felon is someone who commits a felony, then G*d is an iron. ------------ BOB (webber@aramis.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!aramis!webber) [Incidently, I posted the message to the various mail addresses as well as the news groups on which the message appeared. I am stating this because people recieving the mail may not be able to figure out from the header information whether or not it was just sent from within news or is something that was posted as well. It is not a good idea to encourage such confusion.]
rab@well.UUCP (06/08/87)
In the referenced article, the Stargate folk go on at great
length about their views of the situation here.
On at least two points I find them to be misinformed. The
first are their various comments about deregulation of cable
companies. The process we are seeing now bears little
resemblance to true deregulation: most companies still have
an enforced monopoly courtesy of the local government. Thus,
removing the controls (but leaving the monopoly protection in
place) will lead to the circumstances described (dropping of
channels, poor quality of service, etc.) whereas true deregulation
with the likelihood of competition would not. My point being
that the cited problems should not be blamed on what the politicians
are amusingly calling deregulation, but upon the continued enforced
monopoly status of these companies.
The second point is the question of liability in the case of
a customer who is offended by an article. I've always felt that
the lawyers have their heads stuck firmly up their asses on this
point: anything that you must deliberately make an effort to
receive, you have no claim to being "harmed" by. You could simply
not have turned the receiver on. --reasonable expectations of
material quality are another issue, and one that is best decided
by economic forces rather than artificial (legal) ones.
--
Robert Bickford {hplabs, ucbvax, lll-lcc, ptsfa}!well!rab
Copyright (c) 1987 R.A.Bickford. Distribution of this article by any means
including electronic means constitutes permission for it's recipients to
distribute it likewise. You may distribute it only if your recipients may.jef@unisoft.UUCP (06/08/87)
In the referenced article, rab@well.UUCP (Bob Bickford) wrote: > The second point is the question of liability in the case of >a customer who is offended by an article. I've always felt that >the lawyers have their heads stuck firmly up their asses on this >point: anything that you must deliberately make an effort to >receive, you have no claim to being "harmed" by. You could simply >not have turned the receiver on. If someone broadcasts a message claiming that you are a child molester, or perhaps even an incompetent engineer, you've been harmed whether you read the message or not. This is called libel. You and I would view the harm as trivial and not worth bothering with. Others, however, might seek compensation. --- Jef Jef Poskanzer unisoft!jef@ucbvax.Berkeley.Edu ...ucbvax!unisoft!jef "...and now for something completely different."
bill@ssbn.UUCP (06/09/87)
Brad made some interesting observations regarding the cable industry
implications. His (and several others) signature stimulated me to
clear up another misunderstanding, the one regarding redistribution.
Realize and understand that the mentality of the satellite carrier
is cable TV oriented. From their point of view the redistribution
of usenet from a Stargate site is the logical equivalent of teeing
into your cable and pulling a wire next door. Everything they do
has a "socket" or "subscriber" mentality. I'm quite sure that the
Stargate people would not object to redistribution if they could
convince the satellite carrier otherwise. The other similar services
broadcast by the same carrier have equally restrictive provisions in
their agreements.
If you doubt the opportunistic and sometimes repressive nature of the
cable industry, think again. I can't get cable, I have a dish. It
took a fair amount of maneuvering, by the Stargate people, to convince
the satellite carrier not to pay a "royalty" to the nearest cable
company for my subscription. The premium services I subscribe to do,
indeed, send money to the nearest cable company for my subscription
rather than giving me a break on the rate. Program originators claim
that it is a necessary "courtesy" to keep cable companies happy. This
has nothing to do directly with Stargate but it gives you an idea of
the mentality it must deal with when trying to get the service going.
Apologies form the length, I am just weary with and frustrated about the
amount of heat those guys take when they are working hard (and for free)
to drag us kicking and screaming into another generation of service.
--
Bill Kennedy {cbosgd | ihnp4!petro | sun!texsun!rrm}!ssbn!billrab@well.UUCP (Bob Bickford) (06/11/87)
In a previous article, Bill Kennedy writes:
+
+ The premium services I subscribe to do,
+indeed, send money to the nearest cable company for my subscription
+rather than giving me a break on the rate. Program originators claim
+that it is a necessary "courtesy" to keep cable companies happy.
+
The cable companies get away with this idiocy because they have
a monopoly -- enforced by the local government -- on service in their
area. The laws involved are many and convoluted but the result is to
benefit the cable companies, screw you and me, and prevent the advance
of technology via competition.
I refuse to be a party to such shenanigans.
--
Robert Bickford {hplabs, ucbvax, lll-lcc, ptsfa}!well!rab
Copyright (c) 1987 R.A.Bickford. Distribution of this article by any means
including electronic means constitutes permission for its recipients to
distribute it likewise. You may distribute it only if your recipce:ce:catihenry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (06/16/87)
> In the referenced article, the Stargate folk go on at great > length about their views of the situation here. > On at least two points I find them to be misinformed... > The second point is the question of liability in the case of > a customer who is offended by an article. I've always felt that > the lawyers have their heads stuck firmly up their asses on this > point: anything that you must deliberately make an effort to > receive, you have no claim to being "harmed" by... And it would be really nice if Earth-to-orbit transport were available at $10/lb, which is theoretically (and probably practically) possible. But we don't have it. Nor do we have your preferred limitations on legal liability. It is, unfortunately, necessary to live in the real world, in which Earth-to-orbit transport is very expensive and legal liability is very broad. Can you explain why the Stargate people are "misinformed" in not being familiar with a notion of legal liability which bears no relation to current reality? -- "There is only one spacefaring Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology nation on Earth today, comrade." {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry