[net.news] Cost of News Articles

emigh@ecsvax.UUCP (09/28/84)

<>

   One reason why people keep sending car-for-sale articles to net.general,
etc is that there are no costs (essentially) to the submitter.
  The cost is paid by all the sites that pass on the message via long
distance.

**MY QUESTION**

  Has anyone ever calculated how much it costs the various sites on the
net to pass a 1K article in, say, net.general, or net.micro, or ...?
It may be useful to have this information passed on to new users:
"Submitting an article to the worldwide USENET costs $$$$/1K characters."
It may actually curb the abuses (well, maybe not...)

--
Ted H. Emigh     Genetics and Statistics, North Carolina State U, Raleigh  NC
USENET:	{akgua decvax duke ihnp4 unc}!mcnc!ecsvax!emigh
ARPA:	decvax!mcnc!ecsvax!emigh@BERKELEY

julian@ecsvax.UUCP (09/30/84)

When network news articles should be in the 'For Sale -- Auto' section of the
local newspaper, then it cheapens the network to have such self-serving
articles floating all over the world.  Fortunately, there is a relatively
small amount of such 'junk' mail, especially compared to our land mail
service.

To deter abuse of the network in this way, the argument that it costs money
may not affect the abusers, since they are already ripping off the net.
Perhaps a large volume of nasty reponses back to the abuser would help.
How about adding their name to a list of abusers, and checking their name
at the home site for abusive mail -- or do we really want to have network
censorship?  What about a program to check for 'sale' and 'car', etc.,
before it passes on mail?

Phil Julian             mcnc!ecsvax!julian

mr@isrnix.UUCP (Michael Regoli) (09/30/84)

The cost is $00.00/byte for some sites, especially when the 
state foots the long distance bills.  

Netnews for some; higher taxes for others.

-- 
           .:.
           /.\                          Michael Regoli
          '|-|`         ...ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!isrnix!mr