Usenet and Re: extortion via digital cash

[jim bell]

At 12:34 AM 10/20/96 -0400, Scott McGuire wrote:
>"Timothy C. May" <tcmay at got.net> wrote:
>> At 11:01 PM -0400 10/15/96, Rabid Wombat wrote:
>> 
>> >Also - in order to communicate back to the perpetrator, the victim needs
>> >to communicate to the first step in the chain. The operator of that chain
>> 
>> BlackNet-type pools eliminate the chain. There is no "first step in the
>> chain," only a message pool or Usenet group which is propagated to tens of
>> thousands of sites around the world (and even available via one's satellite
>> dish and local cable, a la DirectPC, @Home, etc.).
>> 
>
>I've been thinking about the use of Usenet as a message pool and this seems to
>be a good place to bring up my thoughts.  As an already existing, widely
>disseminated and easily used message pool, Usenet is very valuable to us.  I'm
>concerned that it may not last though.  Many people now complain about how low
>the signal to noise ratio is (even more than they complain about this list). 
>I've heard people say that they have given up on newsgroups in favor of mailing
>list, web-zines, etc.  So, if it gets too bad, might it just fade away?  Or, if
>it remains but becomes unpopular, will it be easy to restrict if we use it for
>anonymous messages?

What's needed is a method for an individual to read all of Usenet, and more, 
without anybody else knowing what each individual is reading.  It's been 
mentioned before that on the back of those DSS boxes there's a connector 
which is supposed to eventually be able to provide computer data.  Somebody 
mentioned that the data rate of Usenet is 100 megabytes per day.  That works 
out to just about 9300 bits per second, continuous.  That's probably only 
about 1/1000th of the data required to represent a NTSC video picture, and 
so it's about 1/100,000th of the data rate of the dish.  

I don't know the economics of this service in any detail, but if we assume 2 
million such dishes generating about $1 of revenue per day,  1/100,000 of 
this revenue is about $20 per day.    Obviously, the cost of this bandwidth 
is miniscule compared with the number of people who might want to use it.  
Sure, they're not just going to carry Usetnet, of course; they'd probably 
carry email and other services as well.  However, many of the 
higher-bandwidth-consuming uses of the Internet will involve one-to-many 
broadcasting, which could be more easily provided by a dedicated satellite 
connection. Further, the company selling the dishes has a powerful 
motivation to make its product as useful as possible, since many people 
currently served by cable systems may have little reason to switch over 
absent a new feature. 

Given the low cost of this, there should always be enough bandwidth to 
implement some sort of blacknet-type system.

 






Jim Bell
jimbell at pacifier.com