[vintermann]

The question is if Charlie is some poor guy drafted to carry people's tapes... or if he's like a billionaire owning the street and forbidding Bob from stepping out to walk down to the other end of the street where Alice lives.

[tmottabr]

Charlie can be a billionaire and own his own private street, but neither alice or bob can walk into charlie private street, they need to deliver their tapes to charlie and charlie will have to physically transport those packages to the other end of the street to be delivered from alice to bob.. and that is what charlie is refusing to do because he find alice an asshole..

Now alice and bob are not being prevented from meeting in person somewhere else.. hell alice can even build her own street all the way to bob house if she can afford it..

[josephcsible]

To make the analogy work, consider that Alice and Bob are 2 miles apart, but Charlie owns so much of the land around them that the shortest path between them that doesn't cross his property is 200 miles long.

[tmottabr]

no, the distance is irrelevant..

the point is they want to use someone else existing structure to communicate while not following the rules from that third-party..

either you follow the rules or you built your own infra..