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From: tim@ism780c.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Which companies pay for news?  Which companies benefit?
Message-ID: <2261@ism780c.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-May-86 16:30:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: ism780c.2261
Posted: Thu May 15 16:30:46 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 18-May-86 14:04:41 EDT
References: <222@epimass.UUCP>
Reply-To: tim@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith)
Distribution: net
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica, CA
Lines: 27

In article <222@epimass.UUCP> jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) writes:
>
>Some of the net's biggest corporate beneficiaries are the makers of
>personal computers.  One such company is one of the largest
>corporations in the world.  Another has seven newsgroups (10% of all
			     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>net traffic!)  devoted to discussions of its products.  A third has
>five.  These companies know who they are, and you know who they are.
>All three are much bigger freeloaders that someone who mails the
>sources to hack (I was amused to read one of the corporate
>freeloaders flaming others for net abuse).
>

I think you have this backwards.  The *company* does not have seven
newsgroups.  People on the net who use that companies computers have
seven newsgroups.

For example, if you read the Mac groups, you will find that Apple has
almost nothing to do with them.  There is one person at Apple who sometimes
answers questions, but for the most part all the traffic is generated by
people with no relationship to Apple other than being customers.

I suspect that the situation for IBM is the same.

I don't see how this can be called freeloading.
-- 
Tim Smith       sdcrdcf!ism780c!tim || ima!ism780!tim || ihnp4!cithep!tim