[1674] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Commercial traffic and what is what??
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU)
Tue Dec 10 10:38:39 1991
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 91 10:36:37 EST
From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU
To: com-priv@psi.com
This *must* have been addressed before, but I'm new here. With all
this hassle about commercial vs. non-commercial usage, and even the
unclarity of *defining* what that difference is, much less how to deal
with it in the technology and policy of the Internet, what has
happened to the idea of stopping the subsidies of the networks
themselves, having them charge back to their customers, and then the
subsidy providers sending money to the particular organizations they
wish to subsidize? It seems that this eliminates all of the trouble
about identifying various categories of usage and how to deal with
them. Of course, it means that the Internet will need to develop a
good system for charging back usage, but we're going to have to
develop that anyway (and soon!).
The only loss I can see is that Internet access would no longer have
zero marginal cost, so users are likely to have to be more
cost-conscious, but that will also apply some salutary price pressure
on the service providers.
Dale Worley Dept. of Math., MIT drw@math.mit.edu
