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From: fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.stargate
Subject: Re: Stargate is a hybrid, a broadcast common carrier
Message-ID: <18049@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sat, 28-Mar-87 17:49:40 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.18049
Posted: Sat Mar 28 17:49:40 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Mar-87 10:30:50 EST
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Organization: The Grande Olde Network Boys
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Brad Templeton proposes (for the nth time since I've been reading his
articles on this network) a "sender-pays" USENET.

Brad, you're free to set this up in your own corner of Canada (and if
memory serves me right, you *are* Looking Glass Software, and have
already done so by virtue of owning your own machine, and presumably
paying your own telecommunications costs), but I know of no fool who,
all other things being equal, will pay for something he can otherwise
get free.

Please note the use of that important qualifying phrase, "all other
things being equal." If Stargate expects to succeed in paying its
expenses, they have to offer something above & beyond basic USENET,
independent of the "broadcaster vs. common carrier" question.
As long as we've got sugar-daddies in the form of the backbone group,
paying the major costs of moving USENET traffic trans- and inter-
continentally out-of-pocket, no one is gonna go for a transport that
costs real money, and/or appears as a capital expenditure that they
can't hide in the phone or other telecom bills.

	six year veteran of the USENET wars,

	Erik E. Fair	ucbvax!fair	fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu