On 1/12/2016 5:49 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
> On 1/12/2016 1:44 PM, John Kuthe wrote:
>
>>>
>>> actually, with all that money, I think I would buy Usenet and turn it
>>> into a for-profit business
>>
>> You would fail, because 1. Usenet is not for sale and 2. people like
>> the WWW a lot better, generally speaking.
>>
>> John Kuthe...
>>
>
> Everything (and everyone) is for sale at some price. The price is not
> always money either.

Usenet is not a discrete site or network. It is non-centralized by
design. So no one owns it, no one can own it, so there's nothing to
sell. One can only provide access for/to it with their own servers.
You can run a server and provide access for a fairly minimal cost -
the guy running aioe does that with a computer out of his basement.
But you're only providing access and storage.

If everyone stopped providing access and storage, Usenet would cease
to exist as we know it. Google is currently the largest provider. If,
hypothetically, they became the only access provider, it would no
longer be Usenet, because it would no longer be decentralized.

That's also why the Internet-access providing companies moved away
from it. Since no one owns it, there's no way to monetize it. Hence,
the explosion of the world wide web, with owned sites that can control
access and thus charge for the privilege, whether by subscription or
selling ad space.