Xref: utzoo alt.flame:21856 comp.os.msdos.programmer:198 Path: utzoo!mnetor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!xylogics!world!bzs From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) Newsgroups: alt.flame,comp.os.msdos.programmer Subject: Re: Marketing your software Message-ID: Date: 23 Jul 90 06:35:19 GMT References: <12955@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <1990Jul23.011210.8148@alembic.acs.com> Sender: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) Followup-To: alt.flame Organization: The World Lines: 86 In-Reply-To: csu@alembic.acs.com's message of 23 Jul 90 01:12:10 GMT From: csu@alembic.acs.com (Dave Mack) >Really? Where does it say that? Did you have to PAY for Mr. Goddard's >advertisement (any more than you had to pay for any other message >your system received, that is?) Look's to me like his article was >just as FREE as anything else that comes floating through here. Dave, You're just plain wrong. Advertising on USENET is one of the very few sure ways to get a site cut off. Period. I'd be glad to set things up to filter out all postings from an offending site and refuse to pass them on. And I assure you so will most sites that do news propagation. And the sites that they're hooked to, after fair warning. There are a very few groups set aside for new product announcements but that's it. Some reasons why advertising is forbidden on USENET are: 1. You bet we paid for his ad, you wanna see my USENET phone bills? Probably more than many people here earn in a month. Now, it's not one ad, it's the spectre of every one of the thousands of commercial sites on this net flooding every group with ads. Not to mention the thousand sites that will hook up tomorrow morning JUST to post ads for their wares if they could. Do you have *any* idea what would happen if we made this network wide-open to the drooling marketroids? Like, cron programs that post ads to 40 groups every night at midnight? You think they're gonna shut up because Dave Mack decided that they were overdoing it? Have you ever watched television? Do you call the stations and suggest that perhaps you could do with a few less commercials? Well that's thousands of dollars per minute. What do you think they'd act like if it was (virtually) free to broadcast ads (i.e. the cost were completely burdened by the receivers, that is, us)? And if no one were really losing anything by driving the serious types away, the marketroids wouldn't care, hell, they wouldn't notice. They'd just blast ads until their connection was cut off. Forget cost, just imagine every PC/KLONE manufacturer in the Computer Shopper posting day and night to these groups. 2. The Internet cannot pass commercial content. That would be the govt competing with private business (e.g. other advertising channels, commercial nets.) It's called "commercial bypass", and it's illegal. A few exceptions here and there seem to be ok in the appropriate places. Anyhow, I don't want to hear people's interpretation of a fairly complicated set of rules based on what they can read into that one sentence, If you have some suggestions go get a private hearing in front of the US Congress, I'm sure they'll be interested in your legal interpretations of the laws and your ideas to improve the inherent logic of them. 3. Most companies would consider whatever they're spending on receiving and passing news (which in some cases can be easily a few thousand per month) to be totally impossible if they're actually paying to propagate advertisements from their competitors. And forget fantasies of "I'll pass yours if you'll pass mine". That's just not how business works, period. Stockholders or directors won't be interested in any tit-for-tat explanations of the company's money going to pay for competitor's advertisements. 4. Worse, many of the largest sites most critical to USENET propagation are still universities and other non-profits/no-tax orgs. There's no way in hell they can justify their budgets going to subsidize commercial activities. In fact, it's almost certainly a violation of their non-tax status. Anyhow, in sum, you could hardly be more wrong. Don't even think about championing this issue. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs@world.std.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD