Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!sumax!polari!6sceng!blm
From: blm@6sceng.UUCP (Brian Matthews)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: The Rape of Usenet (an alternative to the alternative view)
Message-ID: <344@6sceng.UUCP>
Date: 21 Dec 89 20:38:56 GMT
References: <946@crash.cts.com> <6576@brspyr1.BRS.Com> <1989Dec21.024040.25157@athena.mit.edu> <1989Dec21.045834.6375@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: blm@6sceng.UUCP (Brian Matthews)
Organization: Six Sigma CASE, Inc.
Lines: 22

In article <1989Dec21.045834.6375@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
|In case you haven't heard, there are already quite a number of sites
|on the net that charge for connect time (some of which is spent reading
|news).  For example, many university sites charge for connect time.
|Nor is it all non-profit; there are a number of for-profit public-access
|systems on the net.

However, as far as I know, all of the sites that charge for connect time
or are public access sites allow a two way flow of news.  Subscribers
read news collected from Usenet, and can also contribute news back to
Usenet.  This doesn't appear to be the case with the GEnie gateway.

|Nobody in his right mind is going to promise to pay
|royalties to every Usenet poster.

But you do get paid royalties - not in dollars (or yen or pounds or
whatever), but in followup articles, followup email, and new articles
from the people who read your articles.  This won't be available
from GEnie, and that's why I object to the unidirectional gateway.
Make it bidirectional and I have no problems with it.
-- 
Brian L. Matthews	blm@6sceng.UUCP