Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!hadron!inco!mack
From: mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Adding commercial access to Usenet
Message-ID: <4524@inco.UUCP>
Date: 9 Feb 89 19:51:00 GMT
References: <796@n8emr.UUCP>
Reply-To: mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack)
Organization: McDonnell Douglas-INCO, McLean, VA
Lines: 27

In article <796@n8emr.UUCP> lwv@n8emr.UUCP (Larry W. Virden) writes:
>I am wondering what the net's thoughts are on the future (possibly not too
>far) addition of commercially based article distribution services such
>as Compuserve, BIX, etc. to the USENET community.

It's a moot point. Portal is a for-profit outfit, as are many of the
public access sites. Aside from size, I see no difference between
CIS, BIX and Portal. And if The Source bought a full feed from
uunet, I don't see that we could do anything about it.

If someone is dumb enough to pay for something they could get for
free, that's not my problem.

Of course, if CIS were to start charging a fee for reading articles
originating there, I would feel a bit differently about it. Particularly
if they started doing a monthly sendsys worldwide to determine who to
bill.

Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that CIS would be interested in joining
the net. They make their money from connect and storage fees. I would
think that their users would leave in droves after finding
out that Usenet is available for free/cheap. While people would still
dial in to access their other services, I would expect it to mean the
end of the CIS forums.

-- 
Just another uninformed opinion from Dave Mack