Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!texsun!texbell!sugar!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Live News & Professional Electronic Publications in USENET Format Message-ID: <4494@ficc.uu.net> Date: 11 Jun 89 14:49:54 GMT References: <3492@looking.on.ca> Organization: Xenix Support Lines: 60 My original message, which was basically posted in a state of mild shock after reading Brad's ClariNet announcement, has been flamed (in mail... thanks guys) by Jef Poskanzer and (of course) Brad himself. It was a little harsh and lacking in details, but I'm not about to apologise for it. I consider ClariNet to be a basically good idea, but with an abominable implementation. My first objection, which Jef dismisses as ludicrous, is that it will siphon resources away from Usenet... which is a pretty shabby way to treat the net. I'll not spend any time on it. Secondly, Brad has pointed out that I recommended he implement his own hierarchy. I plead guilty to that, but I was thinking in terms of the existing parallel hierarchies such as '3b2', 'unixpc', and 'bionet'. Hierarchies controlled by the co-operation of the systems carrying them... not by a central authority. This is a significant difference... I'll get back to this later. In article <3492@looking.on.ca>, brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: > Read a professional "Electronic Newspaper" and electronic magazines and > columns with your USENET newsreader -- real netnews, not netnoise. Starting off with a mild slam at UseNet is a real good way to win friends and influence people, by the way. > You pay to get a group, based on the number of readers on > your machine. Each product has a base price for one or two readers. This is completely unenforcable. Either you will have to play net.policeman, expect your suppliers to, or abandon it. Do you intend to copy-protect your product? > If you make special arrangements with ClariNet, you can feed other > sites, as you may do on USENET. And here's another implied policy... you can't feed ClariNet to another site unless you make arrangements with Brad. He goes on to say that he'll cut your subscription fee for each site you feed. Unless he cuts it in half it'd pay you to just pass your feed on to another site and split the costs. How are you going to enforce this? > Clarinet subscriber sites must follow ClariNet network rules or > they may be subject to cutoff or more if they break the rules. This says Brad's willing to play net.police. > Is this the end of USENET? No, but the litigation that's likely to follow is sure not going to do Usenet any good. Basically, I don't believe that any sort of central administration is possible given the nature of the medium. Any attempt to enforce such an administration is going to eventually cause grief. Tell me, Brad... are you going to cross-feed the IN MODERATION people? -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Personal: ...!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.