[1301] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Commercial services on the Internet?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bob Smart)
Tue Sep 3 06:33:14 1991
To: com-priv@uu.psi.com
Cc: smart@mel.dit.csiro.au
Date: Tue, 03 Sep 91 20:32:50 +1000
From: Bob Smart <smart@mel.dit.csiro.au>
In setting up an anonymous ftp service the IEEE writes:
>Many people keep asking where they can FTP our Standards documents
>from. They are simply NOT available because doing so would be a
>detriment to the income derived by IEEE on the SALE of our published
>Standards.
If I hear this again I'll scream. Can one of you CIXers set up a
system that will let us buy things over the Internet. I suggest the
following:
1. You apply like applying for a credit card.
2. You get back one of the security boxes that looks like a calculator.
3. To buy something you connect to the soft-supermarket service. You
identify yourself and order what you want.
4. It sends you a random number. You enter into your security box. It comes
up with a temporary key. You type that key in. The soft-supermarket verifies
that you are who you say.
5. If you ordered something physical then it gets delivered to you later.
If you ordered something "soft" [like a standards doc in postscript] then
you get it immediately over the network.
Getting something like this going is a chicken-and-egg sort of problem, but
it obviously has a lot of potential to make money. Particularly if it sells
things that the Academic and Research (and computing) communities want:
books, programs, computers, disks, supplies, etc.
Bob Smart
