Xref: utzoo comp.sys.atari.st:23264 news.misc:3986 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!giza.cis.ohio-state.edu!karl From: karl@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st,news.misc Subject: Re: USENET -> GEnie uplink now working Message-ID: Date: 21 Dec 89 18:36:50 GMT References: <15097@well.UUCP> <935@crash.cts.com> <1120891450065830@thelake.UUCP> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Followup-To: news.misc Organization: Ohio State Computer Science Lines: 52 In-reply-to: steve@thelake.uucp's message of 20 Dec 89 20:50:06 GMT steve@thelake.uucp writes: What is wrong with GEnie making the data available? Is it that GEnie makes a profit? ... Is it that GEnie charges for access to the data? ... Is it that GEnie somehow prevents free access to the data? ... None of these are the problem. Well, perhaps the 3rd, in a way. Portal, the WELL, and a few dozen fee-based, NIXPUB-advertised sites all charge somehow, usually by the hour or month. So does UUNET, though I believe that UUNET is still formally a non-profit entity. (I could be wrong, though; I haven't thought about it much for quite a while.) So charging per se is not the problem, nor is the profit they gain via charging. The problem is that they are not sharing back with the rest of us. As Steve Bellovin said in a note to me last March, one should "hold out for symmetry -- arrangements where they get the Usenet feed, but don't feed back, aren't cricket." (For those [few, I hope] who might be unaware, Steve is one of those responsible for the original shell-script-based implementation of what we now call Usenet, back in 1979.) UUNET exists for the express purpose of getting people to share; people on Portal and the WELL can always post. Not so with GEnie. _That_ is the problem - that they do not, cannot, share. All other things about them would make them a more-or-less ordinary net.citizen, but the lack of even the _potential_ for reciprocation is what makes the link undesirable. From what we've been told about the link, GEnie has absorbed Usenet postings into its "anthology copyright" (thereby, of course, making their copyright highly suspect as to its validity). Also, as Brad mentioned, the lack of an email link is a really serious problem. Individuals on the other side of the gateway can't be reached at this point. Only by broadcasting to the Known Universe (of comp.sys.atari.st) can any single person be found on the opposite side of the gateway, no matter which side any given user is on. This is not a good idea on the Usenet. Standing in a crowded room and trying to have a private conversation with someone 30 yards away by shouting at one another is, shall we say, suboptimal. You wouldn't want to do it at the office, you wouldn't want to do it at a party, and you shouldn't do it on electronic networks. It would have been far preferable to build an email gateway first, and only then implement a news gateway. If the link must stay (and I wish it would either go away or convert to 2-way), it is imperative that an email gateway be built immediately, without weird, hackish addressing schemes using extra fake headers and so forth. This can be done, and it's not even difficult, at least from this Internet side. (The amount of support from the GEnie side that would be required, I can't even guess.) --Karl