Path: utzoo!yunexus!ists!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!hal!ncoast!allbery From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: Results of sci.aquaria vote Message-ID: <1989Nov18.220748.7147@NCoast.ORG> Date: 18 Nov 89 22:07:48 GMT Article-I.D.: NCoast.1989Nov18.220748.7147 References: <36590@apple.Apple.COM> Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) Followup-To: news.groups Organization: North Coast Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, OH Lines: 54 As quoted from <36590@apple.Apple.COM> by chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach): +--------------- | hougen@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU (Dean Hougen) writes: | >Take away their right (priv.) to | >participate in the decisions of USENET and the users will go. | | Point of order. Most folks have a 'right' to participate in USENET decisions | only at the sufference of the people in charge of USENET. The people in +--------------- Just to give a concrete example: on ncoast, news exists specifically because Rich Garrett chooses to allow it to exist (and, to a lesser extent, because I'm willing to take time to keep it running). Should Rich ever decide to change his mind, ncoast will stop getting news -- and, like it or not, you (if you were a user on ncoast) would have no say in it. You could pack up and go, but *that* is your right. Ordering system administrators to give you something for nothing goes over with system administrators like a lead balloon -- and the system administrators (system owners, actually, but for ncoast they are identical) have the right to run their systems in whatever way they choose, regardless of whatever the users might want. (If you use a computer system at work, do you have "the right" to insist that computer games be available during working hours? Same thing.) The Usenet exists on the sufferance of the system administrators who take an active role in keeping it running. If enough of us stop doing so, either the Usenet will collapse because nobody's fixing the problems that inevitably crop up in such a large distributed system -- or another set of administrators will take over the job of keeping it working. In which case the users will again get their "free news" at the sufferance of the sysadmins. NOTHING comes for free, and the Usenet is no exception. You can threaten to pick up your marbles and go home if the sysadmins won't give you the free Usenet news that you consider to be your "right," but this presupposes that the sysadmins consider free-loaders to be valuable. In the case that they don't, your "threat" is worthless -- and I suspect that most sysadmins would take that stance if push came to shove. Whining about how sysadmins are "evil" or etc. because of this stance won't get you anywhere either. If Rich ever drops news on ncoast, chances are it'll be because of the phone bills -- and you can whine all you want, but in that case whining won't help Rich pay the phone bills and he would be completely justified in his actions. You won't have the right to complain because you won't be paying those bills. If that sounds "wrong" to you, you're in the wrong system -- the phone company couldn't care less about your desire to get news for free, they insist on getting paid. Just try p*ssing and moaning to *them* about it. ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery allbery@NCoast.ORG, BALLBERY (MCI Mail), ALLBERY (Delphi) uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu bsa@telotech.uucp *(comp.sources.misc mail to comp-sources-misc[-request]@backbone.site, please)* *Third party vote-collection service: send mail to allbery@uunet.uu.net (ONLY)* expnet.all: Experiments in *net management and organization. Mail me for info.