An apology, and a question (about uucp in Germany)

[Piercarlo Grandi]

In article <567 at axis.fr> philip at axis.fr (Philip Peake) writes:
    
    This is where it becones interesting - apparently our German friend is an
    UNOFFICIAL site - which basically means someone is feeding him NEWS
    without declaring it - THIS IS ANTI-SOCIAL - the rest of us are paying
    more than we need to.
    
    One of the perenial complaints is that NEWS is too expensive here - no wonder
    it is expensive if it is only a small percentage of those actually using
    it who pay !

This is again the old fallacy. If the cost of getting news from the US is
divided amongst all subscribers, then nobody has the incentive to feed other
sites, as the reduction in charges has to be shared among all the existing
sites. If the sites closest to the backbone pay for the news and ask for a
reimbursment from other sites they feed, those that are keener on being feeds
will split their costs with many, and so on, and this will encourage getting
new subscribers. As the system stands now it is *forbidden* for a site to
split its costs with those it feeds, it must share the benefit even with sites
that don't want to feed anybody.

In the end, this means that the only site that has an incentive in taking the
trouble to feed is the national backbone, and other sites have little reason
beyond goodwill to take the trouble to feed somebody because they are forced
to share the benefit with everybody else.
-- 
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk at nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg at cs.aber.ac.uk