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Date:      Fri, 18 Apr 1997 09:57:14 -0700
From:      David Greenman <dg@root.com>
To:        "Graydon Hoare ()" <admin@multinet.net>
Cc:        freebsd-isp@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: News... 
Message-ID:  <199704181657.JAA02594@root.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 18 Apr 1997 09:49:49 EDT." <Pine.BSF.3.91.970418091414.15453B-100000@house.multinet.net> 

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>On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Sysadmin wrote:
>
>> I'm starting to get the impression that this thread's real intent is to
>> eliminate newsgroups which are unwanted and at the same time not have to
>> provide them to those getting newsfeeds, and prevent others
>> from carrying them as well, lest the customers vote with their feet and
>
>Look, Usenet in its current form is like getting the contents of 1 copy of
>Scientific American, 1 Newsweek, 1 Dr. Dobbs, 1 Rolling Stone, and 27,000
>backissues of Hustler all in the same magazine. It's just not a very
>well-balanced breakfast, y'know? 
>
>If you'd read my post, all I'm suggesting is that admins take a moment of
>their day and consider if they really need that custom built
>Joe-Greco-Special churning through 5 gigabytes of pornos every day when
>really, if someone feels they need nudies badly, they can always just use
>the web for a few minutes and subsidize someone who commercially produces
>the stuff. I don't think I'm tromping on any first-amendment shoes in
>saying so, considering most of the stuff on alt.la.de.da is either: 
>
>        (a) illegal as an infringement of human rights or an 
>            infringement of intellectual property law 
>        or 
>
>        (b) spam, test messages, or unmoderated flamage that scares
>            off thoughtful, gentle people.
>
>But hey man, if you got $15,000 to blow on your next news server, welcome
>to the free world.. You'll get plenty of customers and serve plenty of
>burgers. good luck.

   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. 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.

-DG

David Greenman
Core-team/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project



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