unido making commercial use of the net

[Wolf Paul]

In article <5523 at pixar.UUCP> bp at pixar.UUCP (Bruce Perens) writes:
>If unido is making such blatant commercial use of the usenet, why is
>anyone giving them a newsfeed? If North American backbone sites adhered
>to a policy to shut such sites down, removing the financial advangage,
>it would become easier for Europeans to get the laws passed to allow a
>U.S.-style usenet.

This has nothing to do with "getting laws passed" -- the actual phone charges
are only part of the cost, and I am not convinced that changing the monopoly
structure of the phone service would bring these costs down that much.

The issue is the charges levied by the EUnet backbones, and if Daniel
Karrenberg (dfk at cwi.nl) is right that UNIDO encourages small private sites
to get a joint feed and redistribute among themselves (which I had not heard
before), then even that can become bearable. Is this true of other national
backbones, also?

I still take issue with what I call blacklisting -- if I am a site in Europe,
and I set up my own link to the US, I still ought to be able to send mail to
users at regular EUnet sites -- not by virtue of my own (non-existent) 
subscription to EUnet services, but by virtue of THEIRS -- they pay to get mail
through mcvax and unido, and its none of EUnet's business where that mail comes
from originally. Note that I am not advocating that EUnet pass mail from one
unregistered site to another unregistered site, but just between their own 
subscribers and ANYONE on the outside, regardless of geography.

>The U.S. has had a long struggle with monopolies - but we've even managed
>to break up ATT, and are now left with only the U.S. Post Office (which
>doesn't handle phone or computer communications as they do in Europe) as
>an example of a monopolistic common carrier.

Yes, but AT&T is a private company, and the stroke of a judge's pen was
all that was needed in the end to break it up. The benefits of that are
questionable. However in Europe, the state monopoly on telecommunications
and transportation of mail is frequently part of the national constitution
and not so easy to change, especially as there are large numbers of people
perfectly happy with the situation as it is. Remember that modem users
and other hi-tech types constitute a minority of citizens.

It will be interesting to see what if any effect the EEC's integration
in 1992 will have on the telecommunications situation in Europe -- until
then, even abolishing the monopolies will not necessarily bring down 
costs, since each European country is a much smaller market than the US,
and thus economies of scale tend to make things more expensive rather than
cheaper.
-- 
Wolf N. Paul * 3387 Sam Rayburn Run * Carrollton TX 75007 * (214) 306-9101
UUCP:   {texbell, killer, dalsqnt}!dcs!wnp
DOMAIN: wnp at killer.dallas.tx.us or wnp%dcs at texbell.swbt.com