[12123] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Another EFF response to policy questions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frezza (via RadioMail))
Fri May 6 14:39:28 1994
Date: Fri, 06 May 1994 08:58:47 PDT
From: Bill Frezza (via RadioMail) <frezza@radiomail.net>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, stahlman@radiomail.net, dbuck@world.std.com,
gbolles@radiomail.net, rre-maintainers@weber.ucsd.edu, mech@eff.org,
louderback@radiomail.net
To: djw@eff.org, frezza@radiomail.net
Danny,
I enjoyed the pleasure of your company and conversation last night as well
as your spirited attack at Interop on the bumbling boobs at the NSA that
are determined to burn piles of my tax dollars promoting this Clipper
chip nonsense. Please keep up the pressure even though you are
conceeding these statists way too much moral ground. You need to spend
more time reminding people about the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments and
less time haggling over the implementation details of this
stupid plan.
I believe we also made some progress trying to clarify EFF's true
position on the manner in which subsidy mechanisms will have to be put in
place in order to support the EFF's proclaimed goal of Universal
Guaranteed Service.
I am going to restate here what I thought I heard you say. If I got
it wrong, please correct me as it is not entirely fair of me to publicly
put words in your mouth. (Of course, that won't stop me from doing it as
we all know "life is not fair" <g>.)
1) You acknowledge that their will be no monolithic "Information
Superhighway" and that a multiplicity of technologies, services and
communications media will all be competing for the consumer's
attention, each trying to bypass each other in search of market share.
2) You acknowledge that these services will encompass a broad range
of capabilities, prices, and geographic availability.
3) Given this you acknowledge that the
historical approach of invisible
cost shifting within a single provider that has been granted a monoploy
in a geograhpic operating region makes no sense.
4) You finally admitted, and I am quite certain you said, that the
appropriate answer to raising funds to provide for the basic needs of
the information "have-nots" would be a broadly applied Information Tax.
5) You were unclear on how these funds were to be distributed and who
would get them but you did assert that the federal government should
absolutely play this role.
6) You drew back when I called this an "info-stamp" approach comparing it
to the current food stamp program and then you changed the subject and
poured me another glass of wine.
Did I get this right or did I misunderstand something you said?
Looking forward to seeing you again soon.
Bill
