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From: trebor@biar.UUCP (Robert J Woodhead)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Prodigy Responds to E-Mail Criticism
Message-ID: <15097@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 28 Nov 90 15:03:45 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 856, Message 2 of 12


(The PRODIGY response concerning unlimited email)
 
>A small minority of members used the Prodigy Service as a high-volume
>"E-mail" network -- something we didn't expect and certainly can't
>afford to offer at current rates...
>A very small group of members had even created special programs
>capable of flooding the network with thousands of messages...
>With our launch nationwide on September 6th, we faced a business
>decision. We could continue to allow a small group of heavy messagers
>to keep pushing up the costs, and pass those costs on to the general
>membership in ever-higher fees.  Or we could ask those who received
>the most value from heavy personal messaging to pay in proportion to
>the value they receive. There was only one fair choice.

There was another choice; change the software so it cost less!  The
argument about storage and forwarding is bull, because Prodigy
provides the equivalent of moderated newsgroups, a (one) -> (storage,
once) -> (many) situation, and you don't hear them getting upset about
that.  What they seem to be upset about is that one person is sending
email to many people, and their software is dutifully filing a copy in
each person's mailbox, thus leading to inefficiency.

Given that the vast majority of this traffic is in reaction to
Prodigy's "editing" of newsgroup traffic, there seem to be two
possible solutions:

1) Modify the email system so that it stores each message once, and
each user who is a recipient of that message merely gets a pointer to
it.  This is a *minor* change.

2) Allow user owned/edited forums, accessable only by jumpword, and
access restricted.  Note that this accomplishes the same as 1) with
even fewer software changes.

IMHO, as an interested observer and non-Prodigy user, Prodigy is using
this "Email costs us too much $" argument as a way to deal with a
percieved (by them) loss of control over their product.  They are also
probably worried about legal issues (are they a common carrier, or an
electronic publisher?).


Robert J Woodhead, Biar Games, Inc.  !uunet!biar!trebor trebor@biar.UUCP