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friday night fish fry, post-coital gossip, the conversations overhead
in an airplane waiting lounge that launched a company, and a bunch
of other things.
> 4. Usenet is not a right.
Usenet is a right, a left, a jab, and a sharp uppercut to the jaw.
The postman hits! You have new mail.
> 5. Usenet is not a public utility.
Usenet was carried in large part over circuits provided by public
utilities, including the public switched phone network and lines
leased from public carriers. In some countries the national
networking authority had some amount of monopoly power over the
provision of these services, and thus the flow of information was
controlled in some manner by the whims and desires (and pricing
structure) of the public utility.
Most Usenet sites were operated by organizations which were not public
utilities, not in the ordinary sense. You rarely got your newsfeed
from National Telecom, it was more likely to be National U. or Private
Networking Inc.
> 6. Usenet is not an academic network.
Usenet was a network with many parts to it. Some parts were academic,
some parts weren't. Usenet was clearly not a commercial network like
Sprintnet or Tymnet, and it was not an academic network like BITNET.
But parts of BITNET were parts of Usenet, though some of the traffic on
Usenet violated the BITNET acceptable use guidelines, even though the
people who were actually on BITNET sites reading these groups didn't
necessarily mind that they were violating the guidelines.
Whew. Usenet was a
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