Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!crdgw1!brspyr1!tim
From: tim@brspyr1.BRS.Com (Tim Northrup)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: The Rape of Usenet
Keywords: The wholesale capturing of Usenet by GEnie
Message-ID: <6577@brspyr1.BRS.Com>
Date: 21 Dec 89 15:08:39 GMT
References: <946@crash.cts.com> <1989Dec21.000041.6034@ns.network.com> <1989Dec21.020140.24067@athena.mit.edu>
Organization: BRS Information Technologies, Latham NY
Lines: 57

jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) writes:
|In another article logajan@ns.network.com (John Logajan) writes:
|>All I see is that a few more people get to read your gems of wisdom.  Since
|>there is no moral requirement for anyone else on usenet to "post" some
|>minimal amount of information, your demand for "two way" transfer is
|>patently arbitrary.
|
|  No, it is not.  The demand is for something in return for what GEnie
|is getting for nothing.  I see nothing arbitrary about that.
|
|  Let's assume that the Atari ST newsgroup is filled with posts from
|various Atari ST experts (I say "assume" not because I don't think
|it's true, but because I don't read the newsgroup and therefore don't
|know whether or not it's true.).  In that case, those experts are
|voluntarily contributing information to the net, and GEnie is taking
|that information and selling it.  I have a real problem with that, as
|do other people on the net.

Using the Atari folks is probably a bad example.  They have a very
active roundtable on GEnie, and answer questions every week at a
regular Round Table Conference.  Since all the "experts" already
appear on GEnie and voice their views there, and can't see how they
object to comments posted to Usenet being dumped into GEnie as well.

I still say that this link *can* represent a convenient way to diseminate
a large volume of information to people who don't have access to Usenet.
If you have a problem with GEnie doing it, then you could probably use
the same argument against UUNet.  Do you?  SOMEBODY is making money
over there (they do have employees that get paid), so whats the
difference?

>  I think it would seem obvious to anyone with half a brain that

(can we stick to the issues, not the size of peoples organs please!)

>  However, GEnie's gatewaying of news postings is NOT voluntarily on
>the part of Usenet posters, and they have NOT received anything in
>return.  The ONLY people profiting from the exchange are the GEnie
>people reading the postings and the GEnie adminstrators raking in the
>cash from the time they spend reading the postings.

I think it is voluntary -- I don't believe there is any charter which
states that "once you post to Usenet that message will stay exclusively
on Usenet".  The messages go wherever they go, and whoever recieves
them is going to do whatever he wants with them.  That is the nature
of this beast.

>Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
>MIT Project Athena				11 Ashford Terrace
>jik@Athena.MIT.EDU				Allston, MA  02134

Just another two cents worth from ...
-- 
Tim Northrup      		  +------------------------------------------+
+---------------------------------+         GEnie:  T.Northrup               |
UUCP: uunet!crdgw1!brspyr1!tim    |   Air Warrior:  "Duke"                   |
ARPA: tim@brspyr1.BRS.Com	  +------------------------------------------+