Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-lcc!ptsfa!ihnp4!chinet!steinmetz!sprite!montnaro From: montnaro@sprite.steinmetz (Skip Montanaro) Newsgroups: news.stargate Subject: Re: Restrictions on Stargate Message-ID: <1299@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> Date: Tue, 17-Mar-87 09:16:36 EST Article-I.D.: steinmet.1299 Posted: Tue Mar 17 09:16:36 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 19-Mar-87 06:43:23 EST References: <103@stargate.UUCP> Sender: root@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP Reply-To: steinmetz!sprite!montnaro (Skip Montanaro) Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY Lines: 78 I'm not sure just what the big problem is here. On the one hand we have a bunch of people who want to read the news in a cost effective timely fashion. (That includes me and many other people in my organization.) On the other hand are some people (Lauren Weinstein, Mark Horton, Steve Morenberg, and others) who are trying to make that happen. There are, as Lauren pointed out, financial realities to the Stargate situation that cannot be ignored. In the current setup, many sites may be paying very little for their news feed. Some disk space, a modem, and a local telephone call or two per night. Others of us, in order to get a timely feed from something approximating a backbone site, have to pay a small fortune in phone bills because of long distance calls. For us, Stargate offers a potentially more cost-effective way to get the news. It is unlikely that the Stargate folks will be able to hold a sword to your neck to prevent you from redistributing whatever you receive from them. Once it funnels into your local news database, it is unlikely that Stargate-transmitted messages will look much different from phone-trans- mitted messages (perhaps an extra header field?). That will make it a practical difficulty to prevent redistribution over phone lines. The situation is similar from a sender's standpoint. Considering just the moderated newsgroups, it is the moderator's responsibility to decide whether to post an article to a newsgroup. The moderators may have no choice but to not post those articles which are marked "RESTRICTED: do not distribute via Stargate". I don't want to ramble on without suggesting a possible way out of this mess. Bear in mind that what I propose is just an idea, not anything that I've given a great deal of thought to. What I suggest is that those sites which receive the Stargate feed (we will be one of them), feed other sites on the condition that they pay some fraction of their receiver's subscription fee to Stargate, sort of an "associate membership", and that it is a recursive membership. For instance, steinmetz (ge-crd) will be paying $900 for a six month trial subscription. Let's assume the associate membership fee is 30% of the feed's membership. Using this scheme, any sites that we feed would pay $900 X 30% = $270 for the right to get the Stargate-fed groups. If they in turn feed the Stargate groups to other sites, they would in turn require the recipients to sign up to the tune of $270 X 30% = $81, and so on. This somewhat crude proposal does not address a number of issues: 1. What if a site gets phone-feeds from more than one Stargate member or associate member? What price should that associate member be charged, the max or the min? 2. What if an associate member site receives some, but not all, of the Stargate-distributed groups? How do you charge? Based upon historical volume or simply by taking a fraction: (groups received) / (total Stargate groups)? 3. At what level do you terminate the recursion? How do you ascertain compliance? You don't! Just like non-copy-protected software, Stargate would have to trust its members and associate members to be honest. Now, it can add wording to the subscription contract that would require this (or some other) associate membership relationship to be constructed, but Stargate doesn't have, and probably never will have, the peoplepower to investigate "violators". Do not interpret anything I've said in this message as representing any organization but myself. Most certainly, these are not the opinions of General Electric. Comments? Skip - (Free for redistribution by any means, including Stargate!) ARPA: montanaro%desdemona.tcpip@ge-crd.arpa UUCP: seismo!rochester!steinmetz!desdemona!montanaro GE DECnet: csbvax::mrgate!montanaro@desdemona@smtp@tcpgateway