[1277] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Further Info on ANS Agreements Sought
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Schoffstall)
Thu Aug 29 22:06:20 1991
In-Reply-To: <9108281553.AA13466@maverick.osc.edu>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 91 21:02:19 -0400
To: alison@osc.edu
Cc: tmn!cook@uunet.uu.net, com-priv@psi.com, Joel_Maloff@um.cc.umich.edu
From: "Martin Schoffstall" <schoff@mail.psi.net>
Reply-To: schoff@psi.com
Alison,
There is a counter argument for a standard agreement which is called
"fair business practice", completely flexible/customizable business
agreements, pricing etc, can make the playing field very un-level, cause
huge amounts of bad will, and if done in a predatory manner lead to all
kinds of legal problems.
There are a number of organizations throughout the 60's/70's/80's that
ran afoul of these kinds of issues and get mired in a legal quagmire.
And of course national boundaries bring in even larger political issues.
What is interesting is that despite rhetoric to the contrary I've found
evidence to suggest (I'm being mild here) that several network service
providers have provided or proposed services to commercial organizations
at a cheaper price that academia/non-profit - probably to "get the business".
Marty
--------
>DATE: Wed, 28 Aug 1991 11:53:26 -0400
>FROM: alison@osc.edu
>
>OARnet is interested in principle in all three agreements, but would
>prefer that Ittai had made it clearer that the arrangements he described
>are a "for example" and may not pertain to any particular mid-level and
>certainly not to all of them. I consider any agreement OARnet might make
>with ANS to be sensitive information, and certainly would not expect ANS
>to share it with com-priv (or anyone else, for that matter).
>
>I have no objection to ANS talking about the broad outlines of the types
>of agreements it would like to make with the mid-levels, but to think that
>a single public agreement is likely to be signed by all the mid-levels
>(at least in the Cooperative Agreement) is naive, and to imply that is
>the case would be somewhat counter-productive for ANS.
>
