Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!schoff
From: schoff@uu.psi.com (Martin Schoffstall)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: UUPSI's new rules
Message-ID: <1991Mar14.170247.10965@uu.psi.com>
Date: 14 Mar 91 17:02:47 GMT
References: <1991Mar11.143824.24170@searchtech.com> <2517@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> <1991Mar14.052623.26604@jpradley.jpr.com>
Organization: Performance Systems International, Inc.
Lines: 54

>I don't understand it on marketing grounds. Marty Schoffstall, earlier in
>this thread, pointed out how little additional burden was placed on PSI's
>facilities by handling mail and netnews on top of their commercial traffic.
>Seems to me that if you have something that costs little, and you can sell
>it thousands of times for barely any incremental cost for each sale, why
>wouldn't the marketing decision be to go for the highest possible volume?

Let me try again.  Backbone t1 bandwidth is available, especially
in the evening, that is why we give our SCS+CCS customers NNTP
news feeds for free.  What is in short supply (has incremental
cost) are $600 modems and $25/mo POTS lines to feed news through
the normal phoneline/UUCP means.


>
>If they were to abandon their restatement of a contract to include terms,
>which as Sean just pointed out, were not at all in their original contracts,
>let alone in their brochures, and were to allow unimpeded and uncircumcsribed
>traffic, not only would they gain lots more new customers (maybe even some of
>those who have stated here that they would not now sign up with PSI), but who
>knows: some of those "third-party" sites that they now propose to shut out
>might grow up to be direct customers of PSI themselves.

A couple of things here..  PSI goal is not to play to the current
USENET "community" but to bring in a new group of participants who
are interested in the service provision of a reliable accountable
local leaf connection.  (But if you want 3rd party you can have that
at a higher price).

In addition we've seen lots of "abuse" of the standards of practice
in things like domain names and other issues with third parties,
for instance people taking a .COM domain of theirs and handing it
out to lots of other "organizations".   This is a violation of
the administrative law of the Internet.

And let me take a minute to define "third party" which while well understood
in the Internet world clearly isn't in the UUCP/Mail and USENET world.

UUPSI provides email gateway service to our contracted customers anywhere
they want to go on the Internet, Bitnet, etc.  What a third party restiction
represents is someone from "behind" our customer using our bandwith to
get to those same places.  To those organization we say get your own
contract/connection to UUPSI.

While I know that these positions are controversial, this was known
in advance, it did not take me by surprise that there would be
a response, unfortunately it was a particurally uniformed response due to the
inaccuracy of the initial postings.

PSI is simply using a different model of how to provide service, this
includes the balancing of fees, contracts, technology, customer
service, and access, it is not particurally evil, it is different.

Marty