In-Reply-To: <199505171803.LAA05251@nbor.borwankar.com>
Message-ID: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Status: O
X-Status: 


On Wed, 17 May 1995, Nitin Borwankar - MetaNews wrote:

> On a related but different note :-
> 
> CIS, AOL, Prodigy et al have local forums in addition to access to
> Usenet.  If Prodigy ( et al ) readers are allowed to post to Usenet newsgroups,
> why are Usenet readers not allowed to post to Prodigy ( et al )'s 
> private forums.

Remember, the "Private Board" forums are actually "playpen" emulations of 
the "Big League Net".  Usenet has been around for almost 20 years.  Unix 
users were uucp shipping news and mailing lists back when CIS was still 
trying to get E-Mail working.  UUCP is the "granddaddy" of the Internet, 
the first generation of "wide open forums".

The CIS, AOL, and Prodigy forums (and GEnie, Delphi,...) have been 
designed with "safety nets" to protect the user from some of the common 
mistakes that Internet Newcomers often make, like saying "hello" to 
50,000 readers, or posting a "get your green-card from me" ad, or any of 
the other 30-40 mistakes that can quickly create a flood of personal 
e-mail sufficient to swamp a well equipped Cray.

Because the Services are logically self-contained, they can retract or 
withdraw articles.  Compare this to an SMTP posting that will be read by 
5000 people on a mailing list, or the NNTP posting that will be read by 
10000 people on a news-group.

As news-readers get easier to use (AKA web interfaces...), and users are 
protected from the popular "dumb-guy" mistakes, we will see a rapid 
migration into the NNTP groups.  The number of groups is growing 
exponentially, as is the sheer bulk of the content.  Last I read (MIT 
Stats) we were up to about 200 megabytes/day.

> It seems to me that these large online services are using Usenet content
> in an asymmetric way.  I have a Usenet newsfeed and did some statistical
> analysis on newsgroup usage.  Very briefly and ( WARNING!! ) to a very
> crude approximation, I compared the number of users from domain "netcom.com"
> and domain "aol.com" posting to the rec.* newsgroup hierarchy.

Can you imagine what would happen if every Prodigy, AOL, and CIS user 
started cross-posting every article to all three services AND Usenet?

> Any guesses ?
> The AOL posts to the recreation newsgroups far outnumbered posts from the
> netcom domain.
> Considering that so much traffic is being generated by AOL users and transport
> costs are being borne largely by non-AOL sites, shouldn't AOL ( et al ) be
> giving something back to the 'net ?  How about bi-directional access
> to their forums.  Seems only fair doesn't it ?

AOL does give several things back to the net.  Through their licensing of 
Mosiac, they support CMU which provide archives for publicly accessible 
source code.  They carry traffic on their POPs and share their Lines.

They have not tried to foist proprietary "server-breaker browsers" and 
"browser-breaker servers" onto the internet and have their proprietary
"killer protocols" adopted as internet standards by trying to bully and 
bribe the IETF.

In reality, AOL is a very good example of a good corporate citizen of the 
internet.  If and when they provide TCP/IP access to aol.com, I would 
love to connect from ethernet/t1 directly to AOL.

> Nitin Borwankar,
> nitin@borwankar.com
> Principal, Borwankar Research and Development. 
> 
> > :-) And yet, there does not appear (to me) to be much difference between
> > that and CIS caching material from HotWired (which requires a password
> > login, or did the last time I checked) and making it available to CIS Web
> > users. 

Hey, if CIS wants to pay me $25,000/month to cache my server's hits, I'll 
be glad to let them.

> >    Copyright is sure fun in the cyber age!
It might be interesting to see how much "quid pro quo" starts to develop 
now that real $$ is floating around.

It won't be long before congress starts wanting to tax Internet Royalties.
(Not bad for a "research network" that "pulled the plug" over 20 times in 
15 years due to lack of funding).

> > bill
> 

	Rex Ballard
	Standard & Poor's/McGraw-Hill
	Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect
	the Management of the McGraw-Hill Companies.



From rballard@cnj.digex.net Mon May 22 21:12:00 1995