🚀 go-pugleaf

This is the crux of stargate, and why it isn't covered well under existing
law.

Stargate makes economic sense because it transmits the same information from
1 author to hundreds, or thousands, of recipients.  It can do this
efficiently because it uses one broadcast channel to do so.

While this broadcast technology is necessary, the information is not
being sent to the general public.  In addition, stargate does not generate
or own the information.  As such they seem like a common carrier.

What stargate does is, for a fee, move information from one author to
a wide range of recipients.  So they are a one to many common carrier.

If people are free to receive the information without paying an appropriate
share of the cost, then the system will not work.  If the carrier is liable
for the contents of the transmissions, it will have trouble working, too.

The real solution is to use a poster-pays scheme with a reverse charges
facility.

If the poster pays for a message, then it becomes clear who is responsible
for the message.  Plus there is no problem collecting for the efficient
transmission.  Plus it discourages people from posting crap just to satisfy
their own egos

Now a poster pays system, which would have been the best thing from day 1,
won't work in today's net.  For it to work, each poster would have to
authorize possible payment, and most posters will be unaware of stargate
mechanisms, and possibly even its existence.

A reverse charges (collect) scheme is the ideal solution.  In such a
scheme, authorized recipients agree to accept materials collect under
certain circumstances.  The most common circumstance would be, "if it
is approved by a moderator I like."  Other circumstances could be automated.
For example, you could accept anything you like collect, except if it
matches certain patterns.  Patterns might include "is posted by X" or
"contains the word Y" or "follows up article Z".  

Thus if you post an article, one of the following things must happen:

	1) A sufficient number of subscribers must be willing to accept it
	   collect, either because
		a) It was approved by a moderator, or
		b) enough people already accept it collect.

	2) You pay for the transmission (I guess about $5 - does the Stargate
	   "team" want to work out what it would really cost, both at the
	   artificially low price and with real satellite costs?)

	3) The article doesn't go via satellite.  Since only a few people
	   (or none) want to read it, it is more efficient to send it
	   by landlines or other means.

The above scheme doesn't require that you have an agreement with Stargate.
It simply requires that you have one if you want to post articles through
the satellite that nobody has expressed an interest in paying for.o

Now, recipient customers have to agree to pay for what they receive collect.
Collect charges would equal the cost of transmission divided by the number
of recipients.  It's in everybody's interest to increase the official
number of billed recipients, but in nobody's interest to increase the
number of official recipients at their own site.  For this, people will just
have to be honest, or bound by contract into honesty.  It's a lot like
stealing software.   In this case, however, you are not paying for the
information.  You are paying the sender's transmission bill.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473

I don't know if this will help or hurt, but a few thousand articles per week
including the last part of my .signature should certainly discourage the
stargate folks from acting as anything but a common carrier.  If they need
licensing for such, let them go through the application process.  We need a
replacement for a common carrier, because the current one has gotten moby
greedy.  We don't need someone manifesting greed in a new way, by ripping off
our rights in our intellectual properties.  Stargate doesn't want to be
responsible for the contents of my or anyone else's flames, either, I bet,
so common carrier is the only safe way to go.

This doesn't need to be a war; but it sure is turning out that way, somehow.
I guess the folks at the stargate project should take a look at the heat they
are generating, and rethink what they are doing, and why what they are doing
is causing so much discontent among what they hope to be their customer base.

We can all win.  If we all save 60% on our phone bills, and split the other
40% between the Stargate folks and the cost of the startup hardware, we and
they would be better off.  Personally, I'd pay to put up an antenna for my
private use, if someone would provide a public service like Stargate proposes.
I much prefer email to phone-tag, even for my private communications; my phone
spends most of the day supporting a modem, so I'm cut off from incoming calls
anyway.
--
Kent Paul Dolan, "The Contradictor", 25 years as a programmer, CS MS Student
at ODU, Norfolk, Virginia, to find out how I was supposed to be doing this
stuff all these years.  3D dynamic motion graphics a specialty.  Work wanted.

Unemployment is soooo nice though...I never have to disclaim anything!

UUCP  :  kent@xanth.UUCP   or    ...seismo!decuac!edison!xanth!kent
CSNET :  kent@odu.csnet    ARPA  :  kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu
Voice :  (804) 587-7760    USnail:  P.O. Box 1559, Norfolk, Va 23501-1559

Copyright 1987 Kent Paul Dolan.  All Rights Reserved.  Incorporation of this
material in a collective retransmission constitutes permission from the
intermediary to all recipients to freely retransmit the entire collection.
Use on any other basis is prohibited by the author.

In article <748@xanth.UUCP> kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>Stargate doesn't want to be
>responsible for the contents of my or anyone else's flames, either, I bet,
>so common carrier is the only safe way to go.

Sorry, Kent.  You're wrong (at least) here.  Everything I've heard about
Stargate, including at a couple of open Usenix Board meetings and articles
in ";login:" indicate that Stargate does NOT want to be "safe".  They want
to be *valuable*.  The last thing I need is a high bandwidth trash chute
into my machine.  Sure as anything, the chute will soon fill to capacity,
and I can't afford the disk space for it all.  I have enough trouble with
the space news already takes on my machine.  I have heard at least one
member of the Stargate team say that if Stargate were to end up as a "common
carrier", he wouldn't be interested in the project, either.  I would love to
have someone else weed out the utter crap, flames, repeats, etc. and give me
timely, reliable access to what's left.

I believe that there are still questions to be answered by the Stargate
team, but I don't think the "common carrier" question is one of them.
It has been answered quite well, already.  I'm willing to give them some
more time to work things out and detail their plans before criticizing
them.
-- 
Ron Heiby, heiby@mcdchg.UUCP	Moderator: mod.newprod & mod.os.unix
Motorola Microcomputer Division (MCD), Schaumburg, IL
"There are only two of them that I think are idiots." Brian Reid

In article <283@mcdchg.UUCP> heiby@mcdchg.UUCP (Ron Heiby) writes:
>In article <748@xanth.UUCP> [I wrote]
>>Stargate doesn't want to be
>>responsible for the contents of my or anyone else's flames, either, I bet,
>>so common carrier is the only safe way to go.
>
>Sorry, Kent.  You're wrong (at least) here.  Everything I've heard about
>Stargate, including at a couple of open Usenix Board meetings and articles
>in ";login:" indicate that Stargate does NOT want to be "safe".  They want
>to be *valuable*.  [...]  I have heard at least one
>member of the Stargate team say that if Stargate were to end up as a "common
>carrier", he wouldn't be interested in the project, either.  I would love to
>have someone else weed out the utter crap, flames, repeats, etc. and give me
>timely, reliable access to what's left.
>
>I believe that there are still questions to be answered by the Stargate
>team, but I don't think the "common carrier" question is one of them.
>It has been answered quite well, already.  I'm willing to give them some
>more time to work things out and detail their plans before criticizing
>them.
>-- 
>Ron Heiby, heiby@mcdchg.UUCP	Moderator: mod.newprod & mod.os.unix
>Motorola Microcomputer Division (MCD), Schaumburg, IL
>"There are only two of them that I think are idiots." Brian Reid

Ron,
	I really don't think that the stargate folks can succeed at being
	censors of what goes over their net redistribution mechanism.
	First, it takes about 6 to 8 persons to thoroughly scan the net,
	reading 40 hours each per week, and, on their shoestring, they can't
	afford the help.  Second, a lot of the "value" of the net is in
	entertainment.  Group soc.singles, for example, is (one of) the highest
	message count group(s) on the net (don't know about byte count).
	That means lots of folks carry it, and lots read it, to get that much
	traffic.
	
	Evidently, it is not moderated!  More important, it is frequently
	rude, obscene, insulting, etc.  So, they cannot carry it safely as
	a broadcaster.  Yet, it is a popular part of net traffic.  So, if
	I, as a site administrator, want to save communications costs,
	finding a cheap way to copy soc.singles is high on my priority list,
	because it is high on my expense list.  Stargate as presently planned
	doesn't make it.
	
	Substitute at least a hundred other newsgroups for soc.singles, and you
	begin to see the size of the problem.
	
	Third, there are tremendous differences of opinion among net users on
	what constitutes proper postings.  Look through the recent postings
	in comp.emacs about the inclusion of sex.1 in the GNU emacs
	distribution.  This also shows why a censor would have to read *all*
	the net traffic.  (I guess even the arced, compressed, crypted,
	uuencoded part -- that should be fun!)

	As a net user, I would not be interested in letting someone else
	decide that my postings shouldn't be passed on, or that others postings
	should not be passed on to me.  As a site administrator, I don't want
	to deal with defending such filtering to my users, nor do I want to
	spend the money for hardware, licensing, etc., for a facility that only
	solves part of my cost problem and worsens my administration problem.

	Fourth, a significant portion of the net traffic is email.  Since it
	costs just as much in administration and maintenance costs to handle
	email as posted news (though, thankfully, less in message unit
	costs), a complete solution must account for email too.  Censorship
	here is obviously out.
	
	I hope a stargate-like facility succeeds.  I have a grudge against high
	phone costs, and want a better way found.  To succeed, however,
	stargate must continue to support the creative anarchy which is the
	net, or lose its audience and not fulfill its promise of cost savings.
	I think, to do this safely, it must be a common carrier.
Kent.
--
Kent Paul Dolan, "The Contradictor", 25 years as a programmer, CS MS Student
at ODU, Norfolk, Virginia, to find out how I was supposed to be doing this
stuff all these years.  3D dynamic motion graphics a specialty.  Work wanted.

Unemployment is soooo nice though...I never have to disclaim anything!

UUCP  :  kent@xanth.UUCP   or    ...seismo!decuac!edison!xanth!kent
CSNET :  kent@odu.csnet    ARPA  :  kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu
Voice :  (804) 587-7760    USnail:  P.O. Box 1559, Norfolk, Va 23501-1559

Copyright 1987 Kent Paul Dolan.  All Rights Reserved.  Incorporation of this
material in a collective retransmission constitutes permission from the
intermediary to all recipients to freely retransmit the entire collection.
Use on any other basis is prohibited by the author.

Brad Templeton proposes (for the nth time since I've been reading his
articles on this network) a "sender-pays" USENET.

Brad, you're free to set this up in your own corner of Canada (and if
memory serves me right, you *are* Looking Glass Software, and have
already done so by virtue of owning your own machine, and presumably
paying your own telecommunications costs), but I know of no fool who,
all other things being equal, will pay for something he can otherwise
get free.

Please note the use of that important qualifying phrase, "all other
things being equal." If Stargate expects to succeed in paying its
expenses, they have to offer something above & beyond basic USENET,
independent of the "broadcaster vs. common carrier" question.
As long as we've got sugar-daddies in the form of the backbone group,
paying the major costs of moving USENET traffic trans- and inter-
continentally out-of-pocket, no one is gonna go for a transport that
costs real money, and/or appears as a capital expenditure that they
can't hide in the phone or other telecom bills.

	six year veteran of the USENET wars,

	Erik E. Fair	ucbvax!fair	fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu

In article <18049@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) writes:
>Brad Templeton proposes (for the nth time since I've been reading his
>articles on this network) a "sender-pays" USENET.
>
>Brad, you're free to set this up in your own corner of Canada (and if

Hey!  We're here, too (ruptime lists 90 machines)!   :-)

Also: I think a sender-pays Usenet would *degrade* the quality of
net traffic.  To wit, here are my thoughts:

The undesirable postings are the extended flames that some people post.
We want to discourage them.

The desirable postings (why I read netnews, and would pay for it if
necessary) are the informative, well-thought-out ones.  Code.
Bug fixes.  Reviews.  Advice.
We want to encourage them.

These postings take time to compose, and are harder to write than
flames.  Sometimes (E.g. source), they are longer.

Why should a person who doesn't enjoy parading his/her opinions
up and down (I refer to those somewhat more modest than myself)
*pay* to contribute them?  The people who'd pay would be those
who most strongly believe their opinions are right, and *that*
is the definition of `fanatic.'

It would be nice to put all the costs in the right place, but
`poster-pays' won't work.
--
	-Colin Plumb (watmath!watnot!ccplumb)

Silly quote:
Don't upset the apple pie.

In article <12738@watnot.UUCP> ccplumb@watnot.UUCP (Colin Plumb) writes:
>The undesirable postings are the extended flames that some people post.
>We want to discourage them.
>
>The desirable postings (why I read netnews, and would pay for it if
>necessary) are the informative, well-thought-out ones.  Code.
>Bug fixes.  Reviews.  Advice.
>We want to encourage them.
>
>Why should a person who doesn't enjoy parading his/her opinions
>up and down (I refer to those somewhat more modest than myself)
>*pay* to contribute them?  The people who'd pay would be those
>who most strongly believe their opinions are right, and *that*
>is the definition of `fanatic.'
>	-Colin Plumb (watmath!watnot!ccplumb)

I don't know how often I can say this.

THE COLLECT POSTING METHOD IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF A POSTER PAYS SCHEME.
A GOOD FILTER IS ALSO PART.

While these systems could be done without if the cost for posting were
high (for example, anybody can 'post' to the New York Times if they want
to pay the advertising rates.  You rarely see flaming opinions, and if you
do, they cost enough and so are done well.  On the other hand, anybody
with something truly interesting to say [in the eyes of the editors] can
say it in the letters column.  And somebody with something fascinating will
actually get PAID to write something.) if you want a cheap poster-paid
posting then you need a good collect mechanism.

People posting interesting articles (like source code etc.) won't have to
pay the cost of sending them.  In fact, we might set up a system where
the default is that you get to post things collect.  Only the annoyances
and flamers would get shut out, at the request of the payers.  If you want
to be a common carrier, you have to take anything that doesn't violate the
law, but there is nothing that says that flamers can't be charged for the
cost of sending their diatribes.

In fact, with a good filter mechanism, you won't see an annoying flamer
even if they do pay.  That's up to you.

Note that we can go further.  If people write interesting articles, we can
actually PAY them to do so in such a network.  An article could be posted
with the condition, "to see this article, pay your share of the transmission
charges, plus a royalty of 25 cents."  For good postings (only from people
with reputations as very good posters) you would gladly pay the royalty.
Software postings.  Valuable reviews and reports, expert consulting etc.
Legal advice.

The opposite is a little harder.  We could set it up so that a flamer or
advertiser could pay YOU to read a posting, but there would be no real way
to find out if you actually read it, except your word, and too many people
would probably accept all the postings they get paid for and just copy them
to /dev/null.

The result of poster-pays, default collect:

Stuff you like is posted for free (or is paid for), you pay a minimal
fee to receive it, as the cost is distributed amongst all readers.

"Stuff you like" is defined as stuff you have stated you will accept, based
on fancy pattern matching on topic, keywords and articles, plus stuff from
moderators/editors that you like.

Stuff that nobody likes must be paid for by the person who posts it.
No censorship, just personal responsablity for what you post.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473

In article <283@mcdchg.UUCP> heiby@mcdchg.UUCP (Ron Heiby) writes:
[responding to the suggestion that Stargate carry the full Usenet feed]
>The last thing I need is a high bandwidth trash chute into my machine.

If Stargate carried the full Usenet, no one would hold a gun to your head and
force you to carry all the news.  You could choose to accept only moderated
groups, for example, and throw the rest of the news in the bit bucket.  Yet
these 'trash' groups would benefit you, by increasing the Stargate subscriber
base.  If Stargate were an integral part of the Usenet transport system,
every Usenet node would be a potential subscriber.  Stargate's current plan,
to make their very own, new, improved news network, is a much chancier affair.
I wish them luck; it just saddens me that they won't be part of Usenet.
-- 
Jim Olsen  ...!{decvax,lll-crg,mit-eddie,seismo}!ll-xn!oswald!jim

>	First, it takes about 6 to 8 persons to thoroughly scan the net,
>	reading 40 hours each per week, and, on their shoestring, they can't
>	afford the help...

Last I heard, they do intend to eventually pay their moderators.  It's the
only thing they can do.  One reason why we don't have more moderated groups
is the difficulty of finding volunteer moderators.

6-8 persons should not be needed.  1.5MB/day is about 250kwords/day, at 500
words/minute (really fast readers are faster) that's 500 minutes a day, not
much more than one 8-hour shift.  Call it two people to allow for overhead,
weekends, vacations.  And that could probably be cut to one if you simply
forget about the high-volume low-signal/noise groups like soc.singles.
Actually it would be split much more widely, I'd expect, to get the desired
level of expertise for the technical groups.
-- 
"We must choose: the stars or	Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
the dust.  Which shall it be?"	{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry

> The only solution I can see that would allow Stargate to work would
> be to drop the WTBS feed, and try to work out an arrangement with
> PBS to use part of the Vertical Interval on one of their feeds. PBS
> would have to agree to distribute the material at NO COST to the
> source or the destination...

HO HO HO.  If you've ever watched PBS during "begging month", as one of
my friends calls it, you know that they're short of cash.  Do you really
think they don't know how much *money* their vertical-interval space is
worth?  Money that they can get without pestering their viewers, without
compromising their unusual status by accepting advertising, and without
much effort on their part?

Actually, given that WTBS does not own its vertical interval space (the
Stargate project is dealing with Southern Satellite; WTBS has no say in
the matter, as I understand it), probably PBS doesn't either.
-- 
"We must choose: the stars or	Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
the dust.  Which shall it be?"	{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry

In article <769@looking.UUCP>, brad@looking.UUCP writes:
[Much material, including a quote of article <12738@watnot.UUCP>
ccplumb@watnot.UUCP (Colin Plumb) deleted....]

> Note that we can go further.  If people write interesting articles, we can
> actually PAY them to do so in such a network.  An article could be posted
> with the condition, "to see this article, pay your share of the transmission
> charges, plus a royalty of 25 cents."  For good postings (only from people
> with reputations as very good posters) you would gladly pay the royalty.
> Software postings.  Valuable reviews and reports, expert consulting etc.
> Legal advice.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^
...!
It is my understanding that there exist legal restrictions (at least,
in some jurisdictions) to the effect that
1)	One who offers legal advice for a fee should be admitted to
	the bar; and
2)	such an individual -- as a "professional" -- may be liable for
	malpractice under some circumstances.

CAVEAT: I am a programmer, *not* a lawyer.  The purpose of this
follow-up is merely to point out that this whole Stargate discussion is
sufficiently complicated and confusing (to me, anyway -- though I
concede that I may be rather more thick-headed than the rest of you
folks...  :-) ) that we *probably* don't want to add another level of
complexity & confusion.

If I have somehow managed to offend someone with this posting, please
e-mail (address below).

david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill   uucp: ...{trwrb | hplabs}!felix!dhw68k!david

>> = me

In article <7878@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>>	First, it takes about 6 to 8 persons to thoroughly scan the net,
>>	reading 40 hours each per week, and, on their shoestring, they can't
>>	afford the help...
>
>Last I heard, they do intend to eventually pay their moderators.  It's the
>only thing they can do.  One reason why we don't have more moderated groups
>is the difficulty of finding volunteer moderators.
>
>6-8 persons should not be needed.  1.5MB/day is about 250kwords/day, at 500
>words/minute (really fast readers are faster) that's 500 minutes a day, not
>much more than one 8-hour shift.  Call it two people to allow for overhead,
>weekends, vacations.

1) I would be very distraught as Stargate's attorney (not me, no sir ;-) if
   I thought that articles were being read at 500 wpm for culpable legal
   problems.  I _might_ agree that an analysis to avoid legal problems could
   done, by an expert in libel and such stuff, at 5 wpm.

2) As a submitting author, I would be _very_ upset if my article, making
   several subtle points in the philosophy of consciousness, were evaluated
   and discarded, at 500wpm.  I might let an expert try to make that decision
   at 50 wpm and several rereadings.  [Myself, I read fiction at about 600 wpm,
   or 1800 wpm if I'm showing off my rusty speed reading skills, but it often
   takes me an hour to read a 450 word page of technical material, and I
   consider the time well spent.]

3) As a moderator, (nope, not me, no way, never; thankless job!) I would rarely
   be content with just _reading_ an article; most of them are edited for
   publication.  For example, we have one netlander publishing worthwhile,
   cogent articles whose .signature includes: "Debbie's cat house, where the
   customer comes first."  I have to be paying enough attention to notice what
   that really says (not at 500 wpm after 7 hours, I won't), then I have to
   stop and edit it out; worse, it is tastefully arranged stacked as several
   lines at the right side of the .signature, so I have to spend quite a bit
   of time editing it out neatly.  Then, suspicious of what this poster is
   trying to slip by me, I have to go back and reread the article a couple of
   time to see what _else_ he's stuck in there.

4) Also, as a moderator, I have to consider the value of the article:  does it
   contribute something new to a discussion, or is it the same old stuff, from
   the same tired arguer in a lost cause.  This slows me down a lot.

5) As a last small demurrer to the value of carrying only moderated groups,
   I just went and byte counted our unexpired news, moderated against the
   rest.  (Nearly shook the disk drives out of the computer room.  ;-)
   
   We have a 2 week expiration horizon, and if there is a newsgroup to which
   we don't subscribe, it is not for lack of trying.  The moderated stuff is
   just under 16% of the total.
   
   Are the savings going to be worth the hardware investment, the time spent
   revising the news software, and the extra administrative hassle of taking
   care of two systems, if all Stargate is willing to carry is one sixth of
   the news?  Can they safely carry more until they have taken the legal steps
   required to confirm common carrier status?

6) Despite all of the above, I am very much in favor of SOME cheaper way to
   spread the news.  I even think a properly devised Stargate could do the
   job and earn a profit.
   
   However, and happily, I notice, perhaps in reaction to the reactions to the
   Stargate plan, that a new "how to do it cheaper" experiment, called UUNET
   (sp ?), has been publicized in this newsgroup.  Another great way to reduce
   costs would be for all the sites to install one of the new "9600 baud on a
   voice grade, unconditioned line" modems recently discussed in the fidonet
   newsgroup.  I'm in love with the one that splits the line into 512 frequency
   channels - baroque!    I think we are still doing news here at 1200 baud,
   so that would cut our AT&T communication costs by 7/8, while Stargate would
   only achieve a savings of 1/6, as now planned, if the hardware, the
   subscription, and the administrative overhead were all FREE.

   These are just _my_opinions_.  Take with salt.  What are your comments?

Kent.

--
The Contradictor	Member HUP (Happily Unemployed Programmers)    // Also
								      // A
Back at ODU to learn how to program better (after 25 years!)	  \\ // Happy
								   \// Amigan!
UUCP  :  kent@xanth.UUCP   or    ...{sun,cbosgd,harvard}!xanth!kent
CSNET :  kent@odu.csnet    ARPA  :  kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu
Voice :  (804) 587-7760    USnail:  P.O. Box 1559, Norfolk, Va 23501-1559

Copyright 1987 Kent Paul Dolan.			How about if we keep the human
All Rights Reserved.  Author grants		race around long enough to see
retransmission rights recursively only.		a bit more of the universe?

> 1) I would be very distraught as Stargate's attorney (not me, no sir ;-) if
>    I thought that articles were being read at 500 wpm for culpable legal
>    problems.  I _might_ agree that an analysis to avoid legal problems could
>    done, by an expert in libel and such stuff, at 5 wpm.

Experts in libel and such are far too expensive for Stargate, or for that
matter for newspapers and radio stations, who seem to manage fine without.
(And who almost certainly read their material at faster than 5 wpm!)

> 2) As a submitting author, I would be _very_ upset if my article, making
>    several subtle points in the philosophy of consciousness, were evaluated
>    and discarded, at 500wpm.  I might let an expert try to make that decision
>    at 50 wpm and several rereadings...

Somebody at Stargate might give the article a quick scan for legal trouble,
but the question of whether the article is subtle or just stupid would
presumably be made by somebody competent to resolve such issues, namely the
moderator of the group.  Whether he reads it at 500 or 50 is not too relevant,
since he's only doing one group, although I would recommend 500 if he's going
to try to keep up with the traffic!  Note that he does not have to understand
everything you are saying, just enough to decide that it's worth sending out.
I doubt that Rich Salz reads every line of mod.sources.

> 3) As a moderator, ... I would rarely
>    be content with just _reading_ an article; most of them are edited for
>    publication...

On the contrary, most articles posted to moderated groups are not edited
for publication, and there is no good reason why they should be -- most of
them don't need it.

> For example, we have one netlander publishing worthwhile,
>    cogent articles whose .signature includes: "Debbie's cat house, where the
>    customer comes first."  I have to be paying enough attention to notice what
>    that really says (not at 500 wpm after 7 hours, I won't), then I have to
>    stop and edit it out...

Why?

I can see that some moderators might prefer to edit out noisy signatures
(for example, Peter Neumann routinely edits down my modest signature for
mod.risks postings), but unless the above example draws objections from
the management of Debbie's cat house, it doesn't need special attention 
because of its contents.  (He who tries to edit out anything that *somebody*
might object to will end up publishing nothing; compromises are necessary.)

> 4) Also, as a moderator, I have to consider the value of the article:  does it
>    contribute something new to a discussion, or is it the same old stuff, from
>    the same tired arguer in a lost cause.  This slows me down a lot.

As a news reader, it seldom takes me more than a fraction of a second to
decide this! :-)  Granted that moderators bear a greater responsibility to
avoid unnecessarily harsh decisions, it is nevertheless true that an
article which looks boring probably is.  Any commercial author knows that
style of presentation is just as important as content; bouncing an article
which says worthwhile things in such an obscure way that nobody would
bother to read it is legitimate, proper, and desirable.

>  Are the savings going to be worth the hardware investment, the time spent
>  revising the news software, and the extra administrative hassle of taking
>  care of two systems, if all Stargate is willing to carry is one sixth of
>  the news?  Can they safely carry more until they have taken the legal steps
>  required to confirm common carrier status?

If it's the best one-sixth, sure it's worth it.  Remember that the other
five-sixths will not be around indefinitely, because our current network
cannot accommodate its inexorable growth forever.  There will come a time
when fed-up payers of phone bills pull the plug on things like talk.religion!

Note that there are no "legal steps required to confirm common carrier
status", unless you are thinking of lengthy and expensive legal battles
that Stargate could not possibly afford to fight.  There is no foreseeable
way of getting common-carrier status for Stargate.  It's not possible,
period.

>  However, and happily, I notice, perhaps in reaction to the reactions to the
>  Stargate plan, that a new "how to do it cheaper" experiment, called UUNET
>  (sp ?), has been publicized in this newsgroup...

The idea has been kicking around for quite a while, actually; I think you
are reading too much into a coincidence of timing.  I agree that UUNET is
interesting.

> Another great way to reduce
>  costs would be for all the sites to install one of the new "9600 baud on a
>  voice grade, unconditioned line" modems recently discussed in the fidonet
>  newsgroup...  

Many of us have been aware of them for quite a while, actually.  They do
have their problems, like lack of standardization, substantial prices, and
trouble when used for things like uucp.  (Being spiffy for interactive
work is not sufficient to make them viable for bulk data transfer.)  They
are promising but not magical.
-- 
"If you want PL/I, you know       Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
where to find it." -- DMR         {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry