Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cbosgd.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!mark
From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.followup,net.news.stargate
Subject: Re: STARGATE (READ THIS!)
Message-ID: <829@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 3-Feb-85 23:39:08 EST
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.829
Posted: Sun Feb  3 23:39:08 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 4-Feb-85 05:39:27 EST
References: <504@vortex.UUCP> <133@circadia.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Columbus
Lines: 51
Xref: watmath net.news:3097 net.followup:4405 net.news.stargate:120

In article <133@circadia.UUCP> dave@circadia.UUCP (dave) writes:
>Why is this?  The post office and AT&T don't seem to be getting
>sued by people using their services for slander, or even illegal
>purposes.  Why should another carrier get in trouble for data
>that they have no knowledge or control over?

Usenet (with or without Stargate) is fundamentally different from
AT&T or the post office in two important ways:

(a) AT&T and the post office are point-to-point services.  You phone
one person, or you send a letter to one person.  Usenet is a broadcast
service - you post something and large numbers of people see it.

(b) AT&T and the post office charge for their services.  You pay for
every letter you send, or every phone call you make.  Usenet does not
charge for posting things, but depends on each site forwarding the news.
It especially depends on the backbone sites forwarding more than their
fair share of the news (and paying more than their fair share of the
phone bills) to get the news forwarded.

From a legal standpoint, neither of these differences matters.  (In my
non-legally trained opinion, at the current time.) From a
practical standpoint, they are crucial.  When traffic volume increases,
AT&T and the post office love it - that's more money in their pockets.
When it increases beyond their capacity to handle it, there is enough
money coming in to build new trunk lines or delivery capacity.  Also,
increased phone or mail traffic doesn't bother the other users, as they
just see what they originate or what has been specifically sent to them.
On Usenet, extra traffic overloads the backbone hosts (and to a lesser
extent, the rest of the machines on the net) and overloads the capacity
of people to read it.

>I'm not against moderation for the majority of the news groups;
>net.sources or net.unix etc. can't be hurt much by it as long
>as the moderators only delete messages that would cause legal
>problems.  I would be totally against moderation of groups such
>as net.politics or net.religion though.  Perhaps a compromise could
>be made with the backbone sites in which these groups would
>be transmitted normally, while other groups could go through STARGATE.

Suppose that high volume nontechnical newsgroups were localized, that is,
each region (city, state, whatever makes sense locally) has its own copy
of the newsgroup, and discussions only took place locally?  Which newsgroups
would be hurt significantly by such a breakup?  Clearly net.politics would
change in character, since it would become either local.politics or
local.view.of.world.politics.  Which other overloaded newsgroups would
be fundamentally changed in character?  If we can make a list of newsgroups
that really (REALLY) need to stay network wide, perhaps we can make some
arrangements for them and localize the others.

	Mark