dave@umcp-cs.UUCP (Dave Stoffel) (12/01/85)
I am giving thought to a plan whereby Usenet news groups could be packaged for sale to a market segment which does not have access to Usenet. I am thinking about this as a business opportunity for both my company and Usenet participants. Usenet might receive 50% of net profits. The most attractive groups to this market segment are probably net.micro.mac and net.micro.pc for starters. I would appreciate your thoughtful consideration of this idea, and your comments on the issues it suggests. Some of these issues are: 1. Is the Usenet community receptive to this concept? 2. what mechanisms could be viable for feeding revenue to Usenet participants? 3. What Usenet participants could receive these revenues? 4. What might these revenues be used for? David Stoffel Amber Research Group
johnl@ima.UUCP (12/09/85)
/* Written 4:20 pm Nov 30, 1985 by dave@umcp-cs in ima:net.news.group */ > I am giving thought to a plan whereby Usenet news groups could be > packaged for sale to a market segment which does not have access to > Usenet. I am thinking about this as a business opportunity for both my > company and Usenet participants. Usenet might receive 50% of net > profits. The most attractive groups to this market segment are > probably net.micro.mac and net.micro.pc for starters. I already spool off net.micro.pc to floppy disks and send it to the newsletter editors at the Boston Computer Society PC group and the New York PC users' group. They acknowledge that I'm the swell guy who sends it along but otherwise they pay nothing. Don't worry -- I have made it very clear to them that each posting is the opinion of only the poster (sometimes not even that) and that there is a fair amount of misinformation. It's about 2 disks full each month. I am certainly not opposed to commercial enterprise, but expect that many of the people who pay for usenet would be dismayed to find that their employees' pearls of wisdom were being sold by others. Even if we could deal with that, attempts to create some sort of usenet institution to which the 50% of profits could be paid back would be an incredible can of worms, and previous attempts to create such a thing (to buy phone bandwidth in bulk, for example) have all foundered. John Levine, ima!johnl
daemon@houligan.UUCP (12/18/85)
In article <128900001@ima.UUCP> dave@umcp-cs writes: >> /* Written 4:20 pm Nov 30, 1985 by dave@umcp-cs in ima:net.news.group */ >> I am giving thought to a plan whereby Usenet news groups could be >> packaged for sale to a market segment which does not have access to >> Usenet. ... Usenet might receive 50% of net profits. The most >> attractive groups to this market segment are probably net.micro.mac and >> net.micro.pc for starters. Unless a mechanism can be worked out for payment of royalties to each and every author (and their "sponsor"ing employer/university/whatever) involved, I sincerely believe that such an endeavour would be opening itself up to a potential blizzard of litigation. --tgi while (--tgi) /* my mind continues to decay */ ; /* even though I do nothing.. */ {brl-bmd,ccvaxa,pur-ee,sun}!csd-gould!midas!tgi (Craig Strickland @ Gould) 305/587-2900 x5014 CompuServe: 76545,1007 Source: BDQ615 MCIMail: 272-3350 (echo ".ft B"; echo ".ps 999"; echo "$disclaimer") | troff -t # :-)