Xref: utzoo comp.mail.uucp:6085 news.admin:12748 Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!uunet!olivea!jerry From: jerry@olivey.ATC.Olivetti.Com (Jerry Aguirre) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,news.admin Subject: Re: UUPSI's new rules Summary: What third party means Message-ID: <50462@olivea.atc.olivetti.com> Date: 14 Mar 91 07:19:37 GMT References: <1991Mar11.143824.24170@searchtech.com> Sender: news@olivea.atc.olivetti.com Followup-To: comp.mail.uucp Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, CA Lines: 50 In article stanley@phoenix.com (John Stanley) writes: >mra@searchtech.com (Michael Almond) writes: > Now PSI is saying (to some) that you may neither send nor receive >mail through PSI involving third parties. Now what use is a domain name? >If PSI did not intend to allow third party mail to be sent or recieved >through uupsi, why was getting a domain name one of the features of >their service? Why do they MX, if all they will allow is mail from PSI? Let me preface this by saying that I have not seen the contract nor do I have any relationship with PSI. The term "third party" seems to be used in a strange way here. When I think of "third party" as applied to the telephone or postal mail it means someone other than the originator or intended recipiant. By example if you make a phone call then you can record it. If you receive a phone call then you can record it. If you are making a phone call to someone else and I record it then I am breaking the law. You are number 1, :-) the person you are calling is number 2, :-) and I would be the 3rd party. The phone company is the carrier, not one of the parties. You are not restricted to placing calls only to the telephone company. Given that accepted usage, if you, as a PSI customer, send mail to someone external, or someone else external sends mail to you, then it is not third party mail. PSI does not count as one of the parties (unless the mail is to or from them). They are the carrier. There are a lot of regulations in fields from ham radio to the post office and they all assume this model of usage. On the other hand, PSI's refusal to accept incoming news postings sounds like a hasty decision, made without considering the ramifications. Companies do this all the time, alienating their customers for no benefit to themselves. They feel so threatened by the unexpected negative response that by the time they finally understand why it was a bad decision they have become stubborn and refuse to admit it. Usenet is not mail. There is no such thing as "third party" for usenet. Lumping usenet under the same restrictions as mail was ill considered. PSI sells news feeds, not posting privileges. You can not reasonably charge someone for posting if you are going to freely accept the same article when it comes in later via NNTP. As has been pointed out someone can easily circumvent the restrictions by making an inexpensive 5 minute call each night to upload the local postings to a backbone system. PSI will then attempt to feed, at no extra charge, the same article they wanted to charge money for receiving. The cost savings PSI offers is for the incoming feed, not the few postings the local cluster might generate.