[] Individual.net pasa a ser de pago.

Dear users of News.Individual.NET,

effective from April 1th, 2005, use of
News.Individual.NET will not be free of charge anymore.
The news service will continue as a fee-based service.

The details:
==>
Effective immediately, registration for our news service
is only possible through our web site:

http://news.individual.net/

Registration by e-mail (as hitherto) is no longer
possible.

Holders of existing accounts who want to continue using
their account need to convert it into a pay account. This
is also only possible through our web site:

http://news.individual.net/

You will also find all details on payment options, terms
of use, and terms of contract on the web site.

The time until March 31th, 2005, is a transitional period
so that holders of existing accounts will have plenty of
time for convenient conversion. Sign-up for new accounts
or conversion of existing accounts made within the
transitional period (before April 1th, 2005) will not
cause any disadvantages:

Contracts concluded within the transitional period will
last until
March 31th, 2006 (Annual Subscription) or June 30th, 2005
(3 Months
Subscription) without additional costs. Then the
contracts will auto-
matically renew themselves for another year or another
three months
respectively.

Important notes:

Effective from April 1th, 2005, all non-converted
accounts will stop
working.

Users who use the server News.CIS.DFN.DE as part of the
DFNNetNews
project are not effected by the changes described above.
Nothing will
change for these users, they do not need to do anything.

The fee:
=>
The fee for an account for News.Individual.NET is 10 EUR
per year
(annual payment), that converts to only 0.84 EUR per
month. The price
includes VAT at 16%.

The background:
==>
The tradition of running news servers at Freie
Universitaet Berlin goes
back as far as 1989 (historic keyword: "Methan"). The
news service was
open for external users ever since: Until 1992, there was
no access
restriction at all (as usual at that time). Later, a
basic access
management where IP numbers and domain names were added
on request was
established.

Starting with the CIS project (a third-party funded
project of DFN)
of ZEDAT of Freie Universitaet Berlin, the news service
was expanded
by the feature of registration for individual users in
the beginning
of the year 1998:

News.CIS.DFN.DE was born. (*)

(*) see Message-ID: <6apqmg$rbe$

After the CIS project was finished in mid 2002, the
administrators kept
this service alive by maintaining it mainly in their
spare time. Since
this was not sustainable in perpetuity, options on how to
raise money
from external people and institutions for the provision
and maintenance
of the service had to be researched and created. Several
approaches to
find sponsors for the service eventually failed,
especially due to the
lack of understanding by the potential sponsors for the
nature of Usenet.

Since July 1th, 2003, ZEDAT offers - again in cooperation
with DFN - news
services to other research and education institutions for
money (service
name: "DFNNetNews"). In the course of this cooperation,
the server name
"News.CIS.DFN.DE" vested exclusively to DFNNetNews:

"News.Individual.DE" and "News.Individual.NET" are the
new server names
under which the service is available for the more than
250,000 external
individual users that were registered since the beginning
of 1998.

After a long evaluation and preparation period, the
service will convert
to a fee-based service for these external individual
users effective from
April 1th, 2005. We regret that it is no longer possible
to offer this
service free of charge.

We would be very happy if our service convinced its users
of its quality
and of the engagement of its operators during the many
years of its
existence so that they decide to stay our users even if
the service is not
free of charge anymore.

Besides, we would - of course - like to thank all people
that recommended
our service over the years and used it responsibly and
carefully in the
spirit of Usenet!

Best regards,
the NetNews Team of Freie Universitaet Berlin

Glossary:
==>
CIS = DFN project "Center for Information Services"
DFN = Germany's National Research and Education Network
ZEDAT = Computer Center of Freie Universitaet Berlin