[12041] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Fwd: Short substantive EFF policy question
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Karl Denninger)
Tue May 3 02:46:20 1994
From: karl@mcs.com (Karl Denninger)
To: mech@eff.org (Stanton McCandlish)
Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 22:30:23 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: bruce@phantom.com, karl@mcs.com, frezza@radiomail.net,
farber@central.cis.upenn.edu, djw@eff.org, com-priv@psi.com,
stahlman@radiomail.net, dbuck@world.std.com, ggilder@mcimail.com,
gbolles@radiomail.net, rre-maintainers@weber.ucsd.edu,
Sam_Boyle@mcimail.com, brodsky@radiomail.net
In-Reply-To: <199405022127.RAA04639@eff.org> from "Stanton McCandlish" at May 2, 94 05:27:47 pm
> > The only worthwhile thing the EFF has done is to provide legal support to
> > people like Craig Neidorf and Steve Jackson. Putting Mike Godwin on the
>
> I beg to differ. Ever heard of Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet?
Yes, and it is a nice work. It is also a nice piece of political speech,
which makes it an advertising vehicle for EFF and not a public interest
piece. I have it here for customers and others to browse, but warn people
in advance to cut the rhetoric and you'll save 3/4 of the reading time.
> Ever
> seen our work on ISDN?
Irrelavent really, as "your work on ISDN" has done <ZERO> to solve the
tariff problems in Illinois and elsewhere in Ameritech land which make
ISDN a complete win/lose for consumers and business people alike -- only
the phone company wins when you go to ISDN service.
We have <no> ISDN customers right now. The reason isn't technical -- I
can call ASCEND tomorrow and have a MAX box in my offices in a week. My
guess is that I could implement our dynamic assignment paradigm on it
(given the manuals I have) within a week and have it serving customers.
No, the issue is cost to the consumer - at 40 or so hours a month the cost
of USING an ISDN connection surpasses the cost of a 56kbps leased line! For
industry this is unacceptable; it is cheaper to install dedicated service.
For personal use it is prohibitively expensive (there is NO "flat rate"
unmetered zone for calling on ISDN -- all calls are on a BUSINESS tariff
here) and brings little or nothing to the table performance-wise.
And yes, at the end of the month when I speak in San Jose you're going to
hear a blast at the telco pricing policies the likes of which the Gods have
never seen before. The advent of inexpensive 28.8kbps dial-up modems has
obsolesced ISDN service. ISDN TA-style service has three problems -- no
compression internal to the units (and no standards for it if someone DID
implement it), a cost-prohibitive structure for individuals, and NO
interoperability with non-ISDN data equipment (can you say "dedicated gear
and thus dedicated costs?).
SYNC service is USELESS to 90+% of the computer users out there. Async
service (through rate adaption) is not officially supported beyond 38.4kbps,
and that speed is EASILY reached with a 28.8kbps dial-up!
ISDN in its present form is NOT a way to bring the Internet to the home in
a rational fashion. Period. The problems aren't technical -- they COULD
be worked on by EFF IF you decided to.
> Ever noticed that
> EFF worked to get the sentencing guidelines for "computer crimes" amended.
Am I to take this to mean that you don't believe that "computer crimes" are
real crimes, or somehow aren't worthy of serious punishment? I happen to
disagree VEHEMENTLY with that assertion.
> Etc. Please, don't simply trust what you read on the net as the be-all
> and end-all of the facts. I find it a shame that you'd condemn our
> organization as a one-hit wonder, when you appear to me to have not looked
> at much of the work we've done, but simply listened to the rhetoric flying
> about one issue, and concluded that those spouting it are 100% correct and
> that their opinion of one of our missions accurately describes all the
> rest of our work.
On the contrary. I have listened to your own accomplishments and found
them not only wanting, but in fact having the smell of something commonly
reserved for the mainstream politician.
> 1) Would you rather have "dumb guys" do the the lobbying? Lobbying WILL
> BE DONE. This is a fact of life. You can have the law-n-order types and the
> social-program wheedlers and so forth do all the lobbying if you like. See
> how you like the world then.
The EFF's own policy statement sounded like a social-program wheedler's
style of statement to me, and you have NOT backed down from that in any
substantive way.
> 2) on what grounds do you base the assumption that EFF can only protect
> civil liberties when residing in a city in Massachusetts?
Uh, your utter lack of response to civil liberties issues when they arise
outside of the two issues you were involved in up to now? The lack of
tangible results? Or do we need something more?
> 3) on what grounds do you base the assumption that all EFF does is lobbying?
> As a matter of fact, very little of what we do is lobbying; that's the law.
> If we exceed that quota, we lose 501(c)(3) status.
So what else HAVE you done other than write political treatises in the form
of a "Big Dummy's Guide" and put forth socialist programs and regulatory
burdens -- oh, and refuse to answer substantive questions when asked?
> 4) on what grounds do you base the assumption that getting involved in the
> political processes that actually MAKE the laws we have to live with is
> somehow antithetical to the goal of protecting civil liberties?
On the contrary, I have not made that assertion.
I have made the assertion that you're aiming at the wrong targets, and that
by doing so you have seriously damaged your credibility as an organization.
Either that misfire is intentional or not - I think that all the folks who
read this have enough intelligence to figure out the upshot of those
possibilities, and what it means.
See my other post for substantive suggestions and commentary on <what> I
think is wrong with the way you're doing business.
--
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