Re: Reducing Usenet Bandwidth

[David Schwartz <davids () webmaster com>]

On Fri, 08 Feb 2002 15:45:51 -0800, Stephen Stuart wrote:

> I would argue that what USENET needs is a way for the cost of
> publication to be incurred by the publisher; storing the data in your
> own repository (or repositories) while pointers get flooded through
> the USENET distribution system would give publishers an incentive to
> do garbage collection that they do not have today.

        I don't see the logic of this. If you want access to my content, *I* should
pay? Publisher pays would likely reduce the quality of content such that even
more of the content would consist of content that benefits the publisher to
provide to you rather than content that benefits the reader to read.

        Think about it. I post a reply to a question in a newgroup. The more
intelligent and interesting it is, and the more my reputation makes people
want to read my interesting comments, the more I pay. Does that make any
sense?

> It would almost be like gluing a USENET distribution front-end onto a
> collection of Napster back-ends.

        The net effect of 'publisher pays' would logically be that publishers would
have to somehow be compensated for their payments, most likely by including
more commercial content.

        The problem with the current scheme is not so much who pays but what
determines the cost, which is purely the volume of content sent. If you start
using the web distribution model for news across domains, you should expect
to pay for content (either through ads or whatever) just as you do for other
content provided by the 'supplier pays' model.

        DS