Re: Awright, let's get this straight, people

From: tim@leaphome.demon.co.uk (Tim Franklin)

Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Chris Kessel (chrisk@iago.NoSubdomain.NoDomain) wrote:

> |> >As for free PBM's, as long as the moderator is voluntarily running the
 > |> >show for no money, sounds fine to me.  People have been advertising
 > |>
 > |>   Let me get this straight.  You are saying that free games can advertise
 > |> to their hearts content, but commercial games should not be able to?
 > |> Since both are providing the same service, and the only difference that is
 > |> apparent is what it costs to play, that is somewhat strange.

> No, the difference is whether or not your making money by abusing the
 > tax-backed Usenet to get free advertising.

Why do you keep dredging up this 'tax-backed' nonsense?  Looking at your
headers, it appears that your article has moved from your news server to
mine entirely via commercial pieces of wet string.  Connectivity paid for
by ISPs and their subscribers, and by companies who buy large-scale
connectivity from the backbone ISPs.  Not paid for by "the government",
either mine or yours.

At a guess, based on my day-to-day experience with traceroute and
friends, not a great deal of data is carried across the NSF backbone any
more.  It's carried by the backbone ISPs - the likes of Sprint, MCI,
AGIS etc.

> I said before, I'll say it again.  Noone can really stop you from
 > abusing Usenet.  The only thing in your way is your own sense of
 > right and wrong.  It's pretty clear from your posts that money
 > matters more to you than your ethics.  Given that I suppose its
 > pointless to respond any further.  You've made it clear money
 > drives your viewpoint.

But what we're dealing with here isn't unethical money-grabbers.  By and
large, the GMs in favour of advertising are those who have a regular
presence on the group anyway.  They make themselves available to their
players and anyone else to answer questions and to participate in
discussions, both about their own games and about other matters relating
the pb(e)m hobby as a whole.

I don't think that asking for the occasional on-topic, informational
plug for their games in exchange is unreasonable, do you?  It seems to me
to be perfectly in the original co-operative, give-and-take spirit of
Usenet, the same spirit which prompts newsmasters to supply news to
others in exchange for news in return.

Companies who post to inappriate groups, post without the approval of ads
by the majority of the group, or who post nothing but a weekly ad and
have no real 'presence' in the group are another matter altogether...

Tim.

--
Tim Franklin        tim@leaphome.demon.co.uk              Powered by
                    http://www.pelican.org/~tim                Linux

References

Re: Awright, let's get this straight, people
thor@netwit*7*.net.au (Steve Johansson)
Fri, 27 Jun 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Awright, let's get this straight, people
soliiigm@aol.com (Sol III GM)
Thu, 26 Jun 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Awright, let's get this straight, people
chrisk@iago.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Chris Kessel)
Thu, 26 Jun 1997 00:00:00 +0000