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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!clyde!cbatt!stargate!stargate
From: stargate@Stargate.COM
Newsgroups: news.stargate
Subject: Restrictions on Stargate
Message-ID: <103@stargate.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 15-Mar-87 22:36:56 EST
Article-I.D.: stargate.103
Posted: Sun Mar 15 22:36:56 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 16-Mar-87 05:08:55 EST
Sender: lauren@stargate.UUCP
Lines: 47

First, please allow us to straighten out this confusion about WTBS
once and for all.  Neither WTBS nor Turner Broadcasting have any
control over, influence on, or financial interest in Stargate or SIS.
The data signal that makes up part of the vertical interval of WTBS
is, from a regulatory standpoint, not even part of the WTBS signal.
The vertical interval is controlled soley by the independent company which
uplinks the WTBS signal to the satellite.  Like any other carrier,
including AT&T, MCI, Sprint, etc., they want to make money from their
resources, and rightly so.  

As it turns out, since the unique nature of SIS has been appreciated
by the satellite carrier since the early stages of the experimental
project, we have been offered quite favorable and special rates--under
more "normal" rate structures the amount of satellite bandwidth we are using
would be prohibitely expensive and we'd never have gotten off the ground.

Nobody is getting rich off of SIS--not the carrier and certainly not us!
Everyone who is a part of SIS is working on a volunteer basis.  Fees
and charges have been established that will balance out-of-pocket expenses;
there are no salaries included in those equations.  We like to think that
SOMEDAY there will be some money to pay for some of the time we put in 
on this project--we're all professionals who could be out actually
making money doing other things with that part of our time we devote to
working on Stargate for free!  But we consider Stargate to be important so
we don't have any expectations of Stargate salaries of any sort for quite
some time.

As we've stated in the past, we want to be reasonable about pass-through
of information transmitted via Stargate.  But there really is no free
lunch!  Even the shoestring budget we're dealing with now must be
met, or there ain't no satellite and there's nothing for *anyone* to receive!
We appreciate that not everyone has the financial or technical resources
to subscribe to the Stargate satellite feed.  We want to help such people
wherever possible.  But there are fundamental economic realities to
even a low-budget operation like this that must be considered.

There will be different classes of information on Stargate--some locally
generated, some sorted and filtered by our own people, etc.  The compilation
work that results has value to the subscribers.  In any case, we're
working on formulas for "non-satellite" Stargate subscribers.  We do want
to be fair and we do want to help.  Part of the purpose of this experimental
period is to allow us to home in on the best way of handling these complex
sorts of issues.

Sincerely,

The Stargate Team