🚀 go-pugleaf

steve@thelake.uucp writes:
   What is wrong with GEnie making the data available?
   Is it that GEnie makes a profit? ...
   Is it that GEnie charges for access to the data? ...
   Is it that GEnie somehow prevents free access to the data? ...

None of these are the problem.  Well, perhaps the 3rd, in a way.

Portal, the WELL, and a few dozen fee-based, NIXPUB-advertised sites
all charge somehow, usually by the hour or month.  So does UUNET,
though I believe that UUNET is still formally a non-profit entity.  (I
could be wrong, though; I haven't thought about it much for quite a
while.)  So charging per se is not the problem, nor is the profit they
gain via charging.

The problem is that they are not sharing back with the rest of us.  As
Steve Bellovin said in a note to me last March, one should "hold out
for symmetry -- arrangements where they get the Usenet feed, but don't
feed back, aren't cricket."  (For those [few, I hope] who might be
unaware, Steve is one of those responsible for the original
shell-script-based implementation of what we now call Usenet, back in
1979.)  UUNET exists for the express purpose of getting people to
share; people on Portal and the WELL can always post.  Not so with GEnie.

_That_ is the problem - that they do not, cannot, share.  All other
things about them would make them a more-or-less ordinary net.citizen,
but the lack of even the _potential_ for reciprocation is what makes
the link undesirable.  From what we've been told about the link, GEnie
has absorbed Usenet postings into its "anthology copyright" (thereby, of
course, making their copyright highly suspect as to its validity).

Also, as Brad mentioned, the lack of an email link is a really serious
problem.  Individuals on the other side of the gateway can't be
reached at this point.  Only by broadcasting to the Known Universe (of
comp.sys.atari.st) can any single person be found on the opposite side
of the gateway, no matter which side any given user is on.  This is
not a good idea on the Usenet.  Standing in a crowded room and trying
to have a private conversation with someone 30 yards away by shouting
at one another is, shall we say, suboptimal.  You wouldn't want to do
it at the office, you wouldn't want to do it at a party, and you
shouldn't do it on electronic networks.  It would have been far
preferable to build an email gateway first, and only then implement a
news gateway.

If the link must stay (and I wish it would either go away or convert
to 2-way), it is imperative that an email gateway be built
immediately, without weird, hackish addressing schemes using extra
fake headers and so forth.  This can be done, and it's not even
difficult, at least from this Internet side.  (The amount of support
from the GEnie side that would be required, I can't even guess.)

--Karl