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From: mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch)
Newsgroups: net.mail,net.news.config
Subject: Re: Looking for Chicago Usenet Access
Message-ID: <20848@styx.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Sep-86 13:25:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: styx.20848
Posted: Thu Sep 11 13:25:27 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Sep-86 21:38:58 EDT
References: <964@hou2g.UUCP> <5082@cbrma.UUCP> <2531@cbosgd.UUCP>
Reply-To: mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch)
Followup-To: net.mail
Organization: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Livermore CA
Lines: 27
Summary: Charging for news/mail access
Xref: mnetor net.mail:1145 net.news.config:463

In article <2531@cbosgd.UUCP> mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) writes:
> [Discussion of commercial public access systems]
> [...]
> Similarly, a public access host like chinet or well might be a general
> purpose UNIX machine, run by a ``computer center'' like entity, which
> charges for access to the machine, and happens to have connections
> into Usenet and/or UUCP.  Chinet can't charge for the right to receive
                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> or send mail or news, but they can charge for the machine resources on
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> chinet consumed by a user receiving or sending mail or news.  From the
> user viewpoint it may amount to the same thing, but the fundamental
> point is that those machine resources belong to chinet, and they can
> allocate them any way they see fit.  Also, chinet doesn't have an exclusive
> franchise in Chicago to redistribute netnews, so if they charge an
> unreasonable fee, there's nothing to stop a user from finding someone
> else to connect in through instead.

I don't understand. Suppose a site decided to charge by the number of mail 
messages sent or received, or the number of bytes or lines of news read or 
posted. Or charged $X for a plain account and $X+N for an account with
mail/new privileges? Why is this "forbidden", and by whom? Mark's exposition
is a good one, but I don't follow the distinction that he makes.

Michael C. Berch
ARPA: mcb@lll-tis-b.ARPA
UUCP: {ihnp4,dual,sun}!lll-lcc!styx!mcb