Xref: utzoo comp.society.development:55 news.misc:6593 soc.culture.nepal:291 Newsgroups: comp.society.development,news.misc,soc.culture.nepal Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!ox.com!msen.com!emv From: emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) Subject: Re: usenet in Nepal In-Reply-To: harmo@cc.helsinki.fi's message of 3 Jun 91 12:15:24 GMT Message-ID: Sender: usenet@ox.com (Usenet News Administrator) Organization: MSEN, Inc. Ann Arbor MI References: <1991Jun3.141524.1@cc.helsinki.fi> Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1991 19:38:47 GMT Lines: 31 In article <1991Jun3.141524.1@cc.helsinki.fi> harmo@cc.helsinki.fi writes: What worries me most is how does this fit in usenet and uucp policies? NTC is a state-owned business. They must make some profit thru the system or it must help run their other businesses more efficiently. As I understand, that would be quite un-usenethical. Does the fact that this would take place in one of the poorest developing coutries change anything? Profits are generally seen as an OK byproduct of usenet as long as that's not the only purpose of connections; there are several firms in the USA (UUNET, PSI) which sell uucp connections for a fee and they're generally agreed to be a good thing. This stuff costs money to do, no question about that. There's a general sense that monopolistic communications practices are bad, that is to say EUNET's past practices of discrimination against independent networking in Europe were roundly thrashed out on news.admin, and they eventually relented and allowed other networking organizations to hook up without penalty. It would be interesting to determine whether the situation in Nepal is such that any sort of competition for networking services is even possible, or whether the country is in such a state that only state-owned business can afford the bills. netnews also has the effect of exporting revolutions (e.g. soc.culture.china had an impact on the student revolution). will soc.culture.nepal be seen as a threat, will there be restrictions on political speech? i dunno what the real answer is there. --Ed