[11264] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Please release me!!!!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Sun Mar 27 16:56:01 1994
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 1994 16:51:37 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: hays@scri.fsu.edu
Cc: akst@netcom.com, ncpca@igc.apc.org, SAMSAM@vm1.yorku.ca, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Ken Hays's message of Fri, 25 Mar 1994 12:44:15 -0500 <199403251744.AA21147@ibm1.scri.fsu.edu>
>You might try phoning PSI and try talking to them. If enough people
>time in the field offices is eaten up with people calling disrupting
>business , then the folks at PSI will get the problem solved one way
>or another. :-).
Gee, perhaps you can even get the money you paid them to manage the
list refunded.
This is one reason the economics of the internet is currently
problematic. People will, without thought, automatically treat free
and volunteer services with the same zeal and outrage which they would
normally reserve for not getting service they paid dearly for. Note
that the facile response that one pays for general connection to the
internet is *not* a defense at all.
I know, I've managed lists and have been, from time to time, abused.
Sometimes the person was at least somewhat correct in feeling annoyed,
or vaguely understandable.
Oftentimes it was completely unwarranted. I remember one person who
sent in a request to be removed from a list on a Sunday evening, I
wasn't around (btw, this was previous to World.) Not having been
removed immediately every message she received from the list
thereafter, over the next few hours, was responded to with ever more
heated complaints, abuse of the entire list audience, etc. By early
Monday AM she had become apoplectic, was e-mailing managers and others
at the place I worked at the time, calling people, etc. I got in
around noon with all kinds of people (co-workers, managers) looking
for me etc. Not really a big deal, they were mostly amused and each
just trying to relay the message. But what a loon!
I don't know what's reasonable, people will of course respond with
what they believe is "reasonable". I don't know how unreasonable it is
to also just delete the mail messages you don't want and wait
patiently for a response rather than bother hundreds of other people
on a list who really can't do anything about it. Or worse, begin to
posture anger and threaten abusiveness because one cannot have what
one wants when one wants it.
The other posssibility is for someone in PSI's position to just
perhaps decide that they don't have the resources to manage the list
and just shut the whole list down without notice due to the
complaints, simply delete it. Why not? I mean, what are you going to
say? You didn't get your money's worth? That they owe you?
See, back to my point, one difficulty of the current net model is that
people will expect service on a standard as if they paid for it, and
will get angry and abusive and worse if they don't get it, for
volunteer efforts.
It's the dark side of all this flat-rate and all that. Someone out
there really does want to pay for service, they just perhaps haven't
come to that conclusion yet, thus far they only feel the pain of the
problem.
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs
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