From: dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr. Dimitri Vulis)
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 95 12:30:22 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: last straw
In-Reply-To: <v0300420cad0afe0c22d7@[129.46.82.92]>
Message-ID: <D7kXgD23w165w@bwalk.dm.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Dave Del Torto <ddt@lsd.com> writes:
> I've decided to cancel my CrampuNerve account and send the weasels a msg to
> telling them why. I encourage everyone here to do the same with your CI$
> account (if you still have one). These [insert colorful expletive here]s
> only understand one thing: cold ca$h. Thus, the only effective way to send
> them an indication of one's displeasure at their poor precedent-setting is
> to vote with one's wallet.

One could go one step further -- use free trial accounts to go to their
local boards and chat rooms and tell the truth, uring others to leave.

By the way, Cantor & Siegal were long-time CompuServe users before spamming
Usenet with their green card ad.

> Any who are still unfortunate enough to rely on CI$ for Internet/Usenet
> access are getting reamed price-wise anyway, not to mention suffering poor
> reliability and now access, so maybe a few of them could also take this
> opportunity to migrate to an ISP with some real "backbone."

A friend of mine tried to use CS to read Usenet and reported the following:

* There's a very small limit on the size of an article to post to Usenet;

* There's a tremendous delay before Usenet articles pass through their
gateway;

* He saw many articles at other sites that never made it to CS; he estimated
that about 30-50% of Usenet articles just never get thru;

* The expiration in many high-volume newsgroups is 3 days or less.

(I don't know how true this is; his impressions may be wrong.)

When he complained to CS about it, he was told that CS doesn't position itself
as an Internet service provider. They have a lot of proprietary content that's
not available via the internet. They don't expect people to use their services
to use Usenet or Internet e-mail.

And now comes the *point*:

There's much information on CompuServe that cannot be accessed from the outside.
One example is the very informative National Computer Security Association's
forum. I think it would be a fitting response if NCSA removed their forum
from CS. (There are other such for-pay forums, like SovSet', which can be
accessed from the internet without paying anything to CompuServe).

As it stands, there are people who will maintain their CS accounts to access
the NCSA forum (even though they find CS's actions repugnant). If you don't
like it, encourage the NCSA to move their forum elsewhere.

---

Dr. Dimitri Vulis
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps