Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 17:44:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com> To: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: News... Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.93.970418173934.26558r-100000@sidhe.memra.com> In-Reply-To: <199704181657.JAA02594@root.com>
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On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, David Greenman wrote: > I must be seriously missing something here. I thought ISPs were in business > to make money? It seems to me that if you make more money by providing all of > the content of Usenet (WHATEVER that might be), then that's what you should > do. That's the crux of the problem. It is now costing so much to build and maintain a newsserver that it is no longer economical for many ISP's to continue running one. If we chop out all the files it will once again become an economical proposaition and the percentage of customers reading USENET could very well increase. > If you chose to chop out 90% of the Usenet content with full knowledge > that you will lose customers and make less money, than that's just being a > morality Czar and has nothing to do with the economics. I'm not suggesting we chop out any of the USENET content, just get rid of the files that, IMHO, do not belong there. It also solves another problem, namely ISPs are being forced to be distributors of illegal images and illegally copied software. It is very possible that some ISP's will start to be hauled up on criminal charges because of this. The volume of USENET has become so large that it no longer meets the characteristics of a cache or a buffer and so it is not likely to be treated the same way as HTTP or FTP by the legal system. Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting Memra Software Inc. - Fax: +1-250-546-3049 http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com
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