To: StudioBrf@aol.com
Cc: online-news@marketplace.com
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On Sat, 1 Oct 1994 jvncnet!aol.com!StudioBrf@dowv wrote:

> On Sept. 30, Rex Ballard wrote:
> 
> > There are some simple guidelines for posting
> > this type of information in newsgroups.
> 
> I am utterly horrified by some of the "guidelines" you say have been
> established for posting information in newsgroups. Who has established them?
> By what right? How may they be challenged?

There is almost no formal restriction.  It is entirely possible for you to
post your chain-letter on the internet.  You will quickly find your
mailbox so flooded with irate responses that you will not have disk space
to store them.

When I offered these guidelines, it was more a function of describing the
current net ettiquite.  Posting an invitation to get a green card for only
$2000 in legal fees on a group committed to discussing computer
architecture is not illegal, but it is rude.
 
> > Make sure that the people you are about to send
> > to want to hear what you have to say.
> 
> This notion would seem to run counter to the basic constitutional principle
> that protects UNpopular speech, that allows for virtually unlimited
> expression in public forums.

Actually, you may find that you have a much more interested audience when
you address one of the 6000 newsgroups already available.  There is very
likely at least one that will be very interested in what you are offering.
 They may not agree with you, but it will be an enlightening conversation
for all of those who subscribe to that list.  If on the other hand, you
insist on "Spamming" all 6000 newsgroups with irelevant chatter, the
responses to your personal mailbox may be a bit overwhelming.  My other
provider charges $1/megabyte for storage.  I really don't want a $700
internet bill, so I play by the rules.

> > JOIN. The internet community is more like a group
> > of clubs. Each club or clique has it's own rules
> > and conventions. ...

> > Responding to a public article in a news group
> > or mailing list publicly is completely
> > appropriate.
 
> Since when have newsmen been encouraged to join special-interest groups,
> which is what these "clubs" very often seem to amount to? Since when have
> they been advised to conform to the "rules and conventions" of such groups.
Correction, I should have said participate.  Most of the newsgroups exist
because there are some fundamental conflicts.  The newsgroup can be good
drama, if nothing else.  When you can bring facts, evidence, or current
information, you are making a valuable contribution.

> Certainly we ATTEND such groups from time to time, and may sometimes
> contribute information to them in our effort to gain their recognition. But
> to join in opinionated public discussions about subjects which we as newsmen
> may be required to cover clearly represents a breach of professional ethics.
I don't know about your publication, but most papers have an editorial
page where readers submit opinions and editors submit columns.  Hard news
reporting such as that provided by Clarinet has very restricted
contribution channels.  They are more interested in hard facts than opinion.

Nearly every story goes beyond the "hard facts".  If a soldier is found
dead in the streets of Haiti, there is at least one paragraph of
speculation about who might have done it and why.  The streight facts
would not be interesting reading (unless you were that soldier's mother).

> > AOL is a private service and may not want you
> > promoting newsletters on their feed. It would
> > be like going to the local grocery store and
> > setting up your own lemonade stand.
 
> This notion also raises compelling issues about the nature of ANY online
> service and its right to restrict access to the Internet. Shouldn't such
> services be bound in the future (if they are not already) by the same rules
> protecting freedom of expression that presently apply to common carriers?
> Isn't the online provider more like the supermarket that maintains a
> community bulletin board near its entrance? The courts have sharply
> restricted the ability of the providers of those bulletin boards to control
> what is posted on them.

Hopefully, the internet will continue to grow in a free-market path. 
There is certainly no lack of competition and a great diversity of
service.  Some providers restrict the access severely.  The common carrier
portions of the internet (the backbone) will let you send almost anything you
want, as long as it is not falsely identified at the internet packet level.

Many nodes do not carry alt.binaries.pictures.* newsgroups.  It isn't
necessarily a function of censorship, it's more a function of how to best
use disk space and circuit bandwidth.  Mailing a 1 megabyte gif file to
300 users because they happen to be there is an administrator's nightmere.

> > Using your internet provider to conduct
> > business on a personal connection may be a
> > violation of your service agreement. Business
 
> In my own case, my relationship with AOL is that I receive a small monthly
> payment for their nonexclusive use of my newsletter in their Critics Choice
> area. Additionally I receive virtually unrestricted access to the rest of
> their online services. This allows me to monitor for my newsletter
> information provided by other news suppliers and to e-mail the newsletter to
> subscribers on the Internet. This relationship has existed for nearly a year.

Great!  You have their permission to publish your newsletter, you have
your own forum, and your own access and control.  If AOL wants you to do
business from their access, thats great!  This wasn't clear in your
earlier post.  If I put out a commercial newsletter without their
permission, I doubt they would give me the same latitude.

> At the present time, this relationship is probably far more advantageous to
> AOL than it is to me. They are currently paying me an amount equivalent to
> what I receive from just ten persons who subscribe to my newsletter via fax.
> I had agreed to this arrangement initially because it had seemed to me that
> it could be in my long-term interest to do so.

Having your newsletter available, a short announcement in net.announce,
and to listservers such as listserv@e-math.ams.org, and even a short
announcemnt on this newsgroup inviting readers to subscribe to your
newsletter is very appropriate.  Sending out the full body of a large
newsletter to several mailing lists because you happen to know about them
can create serious problems.  There are some hosts where this list is
received by 20 users on a uucp hop.  Each copy is stored and forwarded.
I'm sitting on 618 messages that have backed up on my mail server.
 
> > Expect flames - Virtually any high profile
> > commercial use of the internet is likely to
> > result in various forms of retaliation.
> 
> Posting a newsletter in a public forum is certainly not my idea of "high
> profile commercial use." Your comments suggest that the "various forms of
> retaliation" might legitimately include being barred from access to the
> Internet. That is a frightening proposition.
As I recall, you sent out a sizable newsletter to several people on
several news lists when they had not requested to receive it.  A short
invitation to subscribe would have been GREAT.  You may want to learn
about listservers and newsgroup technology.  Let them subscribe - they
might even want to pay you.


> > Some of these subscribers are paying 25 cents
> > per kilobyte to receive your mail. Make every
> > byte count.
> 
> My general impression of the postings I have seen on the Internet in the
> entertainment areas is that they generally concern trivial matters and
> gossip. However, a significant minority of participants seem to care about
> real news affecting the industry. Since my newsletter is directed at people
> like them and since I believe it may help contribute to informed opinion that
> might ultimately be expressed online, I decided to bring it to the attention
> of the newsgroups.
There is another company, clarinet, that is doing something very similar
to what you are doing.  It's a great service.  They are sensitive to the
impacts of news feeds on users so they actually break down their service
into about 600 different newsgroups.  They moderate each list, and forward
stories from wire services, with their own supplimental information.  You
may be a viable competitor.


> I noticed your "dowjones.com" address. Well, what I am doing is not all that
> much different from what Charles Henry Dow did when he began delivering slips
> of financial news to brokerage houses in the 1880's to catch brokers'
> attention, then assembling the notes into what eventually became the Wall
> Street Journal.
If he had circulated sports information to the brokers, they wouldn't have
been interested.  The brokers wouldn't have been interested in fashion
news either.  Even today, there are brokers who only want Telerate (real
time ticker quotes), they are technical analysts and traders who don't
want the entire PR newswire.  The fundamentalists want PR, Broadtape, and
several other sources.


> > Be concious of the culture. Internet is an
> > interesting culture. It is a network made up
> > of several thousand brands of computers in
> > several hundred countries, and in several
> > million homes and businesses.
> Describing Internet users as a "culture" is as nonsensical as describing
> telephone users that way. I received the most enthusiastic response to my
> newsletter from overseas members of a newsgroup devoted to discussions of
> Asian motion pictures. The "flames" all came from U.S. members who, it would
> seem to me, are interested in imposing such a narrow definition of
> noncommercial access that, if applied to television, would make PBS seem like
> HSN.
There are about 400,000 engineers who maintain and manage the various
hosts of the internet.  Many of them take a very dim view of mail that
consumes 100 megabytes of disk in a matter of a few hours.  A large
mailing list should be turned into a news group.  A very large news group
with huge content should be turned into several newsgroups.  A publication
with lots of graphics and pictures should be turned into an HTML server.
At 10 cents/megabyte, your mailing list can get very expensive very quickly.

 
> > At Digex, they just had a user send out a
> > "green card" type mailing
> I did no such thing. I posted the film section of my newsletter in film
> newsgroups and the TV section, in TV newsgroups.
How big was each post?  Did you send it to worldwide distribution?  Did it
go to NSF hosts?  How many of the 10 million hosts on the internet
received your little "gift"?  Generally, you don't get "letterbombed" for
posting a 50 line story to an appropriate newsgroup.

The other thing is that there are a bunch of carmudgeons on those groups. 
There are some who were their when connecting to the internet was a breach
of national security :-).  Many of them have volunteered for many
thousands of hours trying to build the internet.


> Finally, as a "newbie" I find the "guidelines" you have set down particularly
> abhorrent -- and certainly unacceptable. And, if they have been widely
My grandmother grew up in the west in the 1880s, they had "the law of
the gun".  If you had a gun, you were the law to those who didn't.  The
banks would burn the homesteaders off of their land.

Today, there is minimal regulation of the internet.  If you do something
that really upsets many people, they will respond unfavorably.  An
appropriate posting could have netted you over 1000 subscribers.  Instead,
you got letterbombed with 2000 gifs of hillery clinton (or other huge
block of data).  Ever taped a cinderblock to a post card that said "return
postage guaranteed" :-)?  That is the equivalent of what you got.  It
overloaded the AOL mail server, and you were asked to behave and learn
some manners.  You are completely welcome to do it again :-).

> promulgated, I believe any journalist worth his salt who intends to earn his
> future livelihood in online publishing should also speak out against them.

Any journalist knows it's a bad idea to send pornography to a mailing list
you got from the Christian Broadcasting Network.  Any good enterpreneur
learns to research his market before telling people to buy his goods.

> =Lew Irwin

By the way, is there a chance of getting what you posted?
(via point to point e-mail please).

	Rex Ballard




From jvncnet!marketplace.com!owner-online-news Fri Oct 14 10:29:13 1994