[1025] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Privitization is the issue today
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Willis Marti)
Tue Jul 16 17:28:15 1991
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 91 16:26:29 CDT
From: willis@cs.tamu.edu (Willis Marti)
To: com-priv@uu.psi.com
In <9107121322.AA05210@alanine.phri.nyu.edu>, Roy Smith writes:
= May I suggest (even though I will probably be in the minority on
=this one) that Joe's article, while inflamitory and sensational (in the
=sense of sensationalism) and one-sided, is probably not unreasonable.
Well, you may suggest that, but the article was still unreasonable. In my
networks class, we talked about someone could possibly be "rudely
interrupted" during homework by a newsgroup... There were multiple
articles by Mr. Abernathy and all of them would have fit right in with the
scandal tabloids.
=True, he blurs the distinction between the Internet and Usenet, but perhaps
=that is because the distinction is blurry indeed. Is it reasonable to
I'm aghast! The distinction is blurry only to those who don't know what
they're talking about and take little effort to find out -- a reporter is
allegedly searching out facts/truth.
=expect somebody to differentiate between the Book of the Month Club and the
=Postal Service, if that person has never experienced either before, or
=anything like them? Or between The Phone Company and dial-a-porn? In all
=cases, one is just the vehicle for transporting the other, yet the vehicle
=is the visible object.
People can tell the difference between Ford & GM (& Toyota...). They
presumably understand the difference between the Chronicle (and other big
city papers) and the ads for XXX rated movie theaters. And if he (Joe) just
"made a mistake in perception", how come the arrogance as the best one
to write about NREN et al?
=
= And, if alt.sex constantly hits the top of the arbitron listings
=for readership (and if alt.sex.pictures is the single largest volume group
=by far), is it that unreasonable to assume that pornography is a
=significant, even major, part of of Usenet?
First, Usenet is not the Internet. Second, netnews is not the only thing
distributed over Usenet. Third, the arbitron ratings measure only bytes, not
number of articles, to determine volume. Fourth, the ratings do not measure
what isn't news.
