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From: stargate@stargate.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.stargate
Subject: response to questions about Stargate Experimental Subscriptions
Message-ID: <102@stargate.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 22-Feb-87 21:39:14 EST
Article-I.D.: stargate.102
Posted: Sun Feb 22 21:39:14 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Feb-87 05:40:17 EST
Sender: mark@stargate.UUCP
Lines: 167

The most important thing to note is that this initial phase of
subscription availability to Stargate is an experiment.  Some of the
issues related to a future production service are impossible to define
fully until after we have experience with a reasonable-sized
experimental subscriber base in day-to-day operations.  At this stage,
the subscribers we're looking for are organizations who feel that it
would interesting, useful, or even just plain fun to participate in the
early stages of a unique operation that is forging considerable new
ground in a number of areas.

Initially SIS plans to transmit virtually all of the available
moderated Usenet newsgroups and possibly some other moderated materials
from non-Usenet sources.  As the volume of non-moderated material on
Usenet has continued to grow explosively, and the overall quality in
many unmoderated groups has continued to decline, it has become
increasingly obvious that moderated groups (which are continuing to
grow rapidly in popularity) are the most appropriate material for
broadcast at this stage.

We are carrying only moderated newsgroups since that's the only
reasonable manner in which we can ensure quality and manage our
transmission bandwidth.  The unmoderated groups for which there is
demand also tend to be of very high volume and difficult for people to
keep up with.  We're working on plans for future additional services
(e.g. highlights of unmoderated groups and the creation of more
moderated groups) over Stargate as well.  Overall, Usenet netnews is
just the starting point for the sorts of services we plan to
provide--we are looking at a wide variety of information sources as
potential candidates for Stargate transmission.

Since we have very limited financial resources with which to operate
during this experimental period, SIS is not currently incorporated.  We
are attempting to keep our expenses (and thusly subscription fees) to
an absolute minimum--and incorporation just does not make sense during
this early experimental phase.  SIS currently exists as a sole
proprietership, in the name of the SIS business manager, Steve
Morenberg.  Incorporation will occur when feasible.  The issue of
profit vs. non-profit corporations is considerably more complex than it
at first appears.  Creating a non-profit corporation introduces a
significant number of restrictions that could potentially impact
services in a negative manner (for example, non-competitive issues may
prevent the offering of useful services by a non-profit entity that
could be provided by a for-profit entity).  There are also considerable
complications in day-to-day operations, bookeeping, etc. involved in
non-profit status.  On the other hand, many firms which are
"for-profit" make little profit (or even none).  It may well be the
case that from the standpoint of services, complexity, etc. it would be
easiest to be "for-profit" but to still hold fees and rates as low as
possible.  We are currently investigating the details of the "profit
vs. non-profit" issues--no decisions have been made as of yet.  But our
goal remains the same in either case--to keep the services being
offered priced as fairly and reasonably as possible.

Regarding transmitted material copyrights--transmissions from a system
like Stargate are best viewed as a "compilation" work.  Ultimately,
some of the material will come from public sources (such as Usenet) and
other material may be locally originated by Stargate or other
entities.  Regardless of origin, material broadcast through a
communications channel "not meant for reception by the general public"
(which is the category Stargate is in) can be protected through a
number of mechanisms, including contractual agreement with
subscribers.

In particular, we want to be as flexible as possible about the use of
Usenet newsgroups being transmitted by Stargate.  However, we do have
some contraints.  We will ultimately be paying fees for our satellite
time based on the number of subscribers, and we need to have a
significant number of paying subscribers to maintain the feasibility of
the system--it is not economically practical to maintain a satellite
system if only a few sites subscribed to the system and they simply
passed material around via dialup to many other sites.

The assumption with Stargate is that most sites with the capability of
receiving materials directly from the WTBS data feed will want to do
so.  One of the important advantages of this is the receiving of
materials simultaneously with all other subscribers, with none of the
latencies or other problems associated with connection-based systems
for distributing articles.  Since each subscribing site has virtually a
direct, continuous, and simultaneous link with the central node, the
ability of Stargate to provide information on a timely basis is
unsurpassed.  We realize that some sites will be unable for technical
reasons to tie-in directly with the WTBS-based system.  We are working
on plans to allow those sites to receive materials from other sites
that do subscribe directly to Stargate, with a fee schedule adjusted to
take this situation into account.

Of course, in the long run the amount of information being sent by
Stargate may be so large that such "non-direct" sites would be unable
to receive all materials, and of course such sites will also be
receiving all materials later than direct subscribers, reducing their
ability to participate in discussions in a timely manner.

We need to encourage as many sites as possible to directly subscribe to
Stargate to encourage the viability of the network and the lowest
overall fees possible.  However, for those situations where a
subscriber site wishes to feed portions of the Stargate data stream to
another site which is unable to subscribe directly itself, we will
attempt whenever possible to reach an amicable agreement under which
this can be done and still maintain the overall viability of the
satellite distribution system which is the primary modality of the
network.  Part of the purpose of the experimental subscription period
is to help give us time to judge the sorts of arrangements, subcriber
relationships, etc. that need to be established to help everyone get
the most benefit possible from Stargate at the lowest possible costs.

About equipment.  There are two (eventually an optional third) pieces
of equipment involved with Stargate:

    1) The data decoder.  This is a highly specialized LSI-based device
       which extracts, slices, and decodes data from the video signal
       at very high video speeds.  It uses a proprietary protocol (held
       proprietary by the manufacturer to protect their years of R&D
       work) and would be exceptionally difficult to duplicate.  We
       must arrange for the setup, addressing, and delivery of this
       decoder for subscribers.

    2) The cable-TV demodulator.  This is NOT the same thing as the
       typical boxes your local cable-TV company provides to you at
       home.  Normal cable-TV boxes are strictly RF to RF units.  The
       Stargate data demod must output carefully controlled baseband
       video.  We have found a relatively inexpensive demodulator that
       meets the required tight specifications of video output
       filtering, baseband performance, and other parameters that are
       required to achieve good performance with the data decoder.
       Testing has also indicated that many other demods do NOT meet
       the required specifications.  Since our demod and decoder have
       been tested with each other for proper operation, we cannot
       assure reasonable performance with subscriber-provided demod
       equipment.  While we can't force everyone to use our demod, we
       strongly urge its acceptance as the best match for the job at
       hand.

    3) The buffer box.  In the future, we plan to make an optional
       "buffer box" available to subscribers who would like to offload
       the direct Stargate data stream from their host computers.  This
       inexpensive 68000-based computer would be quite difficult to
       duplicate in functionality for less money than our price, since
       it is being mass-produced.  However, no subscriber will be
       forced to buy or use the buffer box, and if a subscriber wishes
       to use their own equipment and software (e.g. some other
       dedicated micro, etc.) to buffer the data coming from the
       Stargate decoder they will of course be free to do so.  We
       believe, however, that many sites will not need any such
       buffering equipment, since they will achieve good performance
       with a direct hookup from the Stargate decoder to their host
       computers.

It is not possible at this time for us to announce "production phase"
rates for service after the experimental period.  These will depend on
the number of subscribers and the success of the experimental phase.
However, it is our goal that the production fees fall into the same
basic range as the experimental fees.

If anyone has any further questions about any of the above, please feel
free to contact us directly at:

  stargate-query@Stargate.COM			(if you understand domains)

  cbosgd!stargate!stargate-query@seismo.css.gov	(for ARPANET hosts that
						don't conform to RFC 973/974)

  cbosgd!stargate!stargate-query		(if you can get to cbosgd
						with bangs from UUCP)

Thank you.

The Stargate Team