Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: A Thought Experiment about News.Groups
Message-ID: <3400@looking.on.ca>
Date: 30 May 89 02:18:35 GMT
References: <371@odi.ODI.COM>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 52

These suggestions are worthwhile, but in fact it's not that
different today.   Anybody can start a new group with any name on
their own site.  They can feed it to those that want it.  Those that
don't want it don't have to take it.

So a change in structure wouldn't help.  We have never gone to that
sort of structure because of the camp that solidly believes in a concept
called "namespace control."   They believe (with some merit, though not
as much as they sometimes expound) that the namespace of groups should
be kept simple and controlled to avoid more net chaos.

Other forces have stopped changes that might have been better for
usenet in the past.  They would work against such centralization of
groups.

For example, it's just plain stupid that usenet gets transmitted
multiple times into the same city, as was the case for quite some time.
Or multiple times at all, for that matter.

So some folks said, "USENET is really broadcast, let's transmit it by
satellite."  So they did.  To pay for the transmission, however, it was
clear that all the people who benefited from this clear improvement
in efficiency should share the cost.  So the "Stargate" folks said that
they would have to control re-feeding of what people got from the
downlink, so that each downlink recipient would share the cost evenly.

Otherwise they would have had to charge a fortune for one downlink
and expect the single site to feed everybody and charge them.  If they
charged a moderate price for a downlink that reflected everybody sharing
the cost, then 100 sites would get together, get one downlink and not pay
their share.

The result?  People objecting to any sort of scheme like this started
objecting vehemently, and putting copyrights on their messages forbidding
any controlled distribution scheme that might allow the sharing of costs.

They thought they were fighting for free flow of information.  Instead
they hurt the project, and just made everybody pay a lot more for their
datacom.  The only benefit was to the phone company.

Today satellite technology is much cheaper, and a site in Vancouver is
feeding usenet into a data channel with no restrictions just to help
sell satellite decoder boards.   As well, the internet now carries much
of the inter-city usenet traffic, eliminating the wasteful links.

But the reason I tell this story is to remind people that on usenet,
it seems impossible to do anything constructive if it might involve
any level of control.   People on usenet seem to completely
misunderstand anarchy.  Anarchy is the absence of government and
(usually) law.  It is not the absence of order, systems and standards.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473