bstempleton (01/11/83)
Well, replies to the proposals for Usenet Inc. from myself and kiessig@fortune have shown a few things. The first is that a large portion of the USENET is convinced that it is currently free. This is, in most cases, a lot of balderdash. Many sites pay quite a bit, and a lot of the others are supported by the generousity of Digital. Inside BTL, it is supported by the existence of local nets and wats type lines. Even though USENET corp would reduce the costs for any site that does pay the bills, it turns out that it is much easier to get your company to pay phone costs than it would be to pay another compnay for usenet transmission costs. It turns out to be much easier to sneak things in with the normally rather large phone bill. I think that's how DEC does it too. These two factors would restrict the number of people who would subsribe to USENET inc.'s services. It is unsure if the remaining people could recover its costs. USENET inc, in my opinion, could only charge for what it provided, namely storing and forwarding. Ie. sites would be billed according to how much time they were connected to a central machine. This is fair, and so nobody would complain or be able to cheat. Charging by user or by number of sites connected would be very difficult. One might attempt to limit the number of sites a subscriber fans out to, and could in fact do this by providing objects of the news source only, but this seems rather risky. The other thing USENET inc. could charge for would be its consulting and software maintainance services. If a programmer were paid to maintain uucp type stuff and news, then sites who run it should be expected to contribute. Perhaps a discount for educational sites. The question remains as to how much bootlegging there would be. I don't thing the company could have many control powers, although there is one that I think does belong in its charter. If the company produces a new release of the news/uucp software, it should be required of all subscribers to update within a reasonable time limit. This can get away from the problems of endless versions of the code with endless bugs being out there. Any site that wants to run an interface to their own, non-supported stuff is ok as long as that does not hurt the supported stuff. Control of content is right out, unless forced by court injunction. If the customers want to pay, they can send and receive whatever they like. USENET inc. would probably gain its main success by other services, such as 1) Consulting of all kinds - answering questions etc. 2) Connection to other networks, the Source, private BBSs other OSs. 3) Printing of messages and sending them by USnail to non-netters (like having your MP or senator on the net! - or your grandmother.) Once it got to a reasonable level, it would be easier for companies to justify subscribing, for it will, after all, be cheaper than the phone or else there is something wrong going on.