[1695] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
An Open Letter from the Frontier
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mitch Kapor)
Wed Dec 11 10:58:49 1991
To: members@farnet.org, regional-techs@merit.edu, com-priv@psi.com,
From: Mitch Kapor <mkapor@eff.org>, Dave Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 91 10:57:06 EST
Merit, NSF, and ANS have recently announced tighter restrictions
on commercial traffic flowing across the backbone. Steve Wolff
of NSF posted a clarification yesterday citing the reasons for
this move.
This has set off a flurry of responses, some of which question
whether it is really meaningful to distinguish between "research"
and "commercial" traffic, others of which begin to propose
technically elaborate schemes to embody finer distinctions. Steve
agrees the model of segregating traffic by network number is
seriously broken, but that he's forced to use it by virtue of the
obligations upon federal employees in the disbursement of federal
support.
The evolution of a strong networking infrastructure is essential
to the health of R&D in this nation. Competition has shown itself
to be an effective vehicle for creating the best for the
consumers as well as providing jobs and trade. We believe that no
further progress in networking infrastructure is possible without
insuring the creation of a level competitive playing field.
The situation which will result from the latest mandates creates
a market that is fundamentally unfair in that it will tilt the
competitive playing field too strongly toward one player --
ANS. Since regional networks are physically connected to the
ANS backbone, they will be forced to execute an ANS agreement
inorder to receive any commercial traffic whatsoever. This
creates a unfair marketing advantage for the ANS commercial
business unit. As with any provider, ANS's commercial business
unit is a welcome competitor in the market -- however, it must
not receive an unfair competitive advantage owing to ANS's
relationship with the NSF.
This advantage to ANS will have been accomplished solely by
virtue of the exercise of intentional or unintentional NSF
policy. No provider -- ALTERNET, ANS, CERFnet, PSI, etc. should
be given such an advantage without public and open discussion and
competition.
We are looking for ways to ameliorate the situation. We do not
think that charges and counterchargers however valid are in the
end constructive. We are looking for concrete positive
suggestions, either for a resolution process, or for elements of
an "level field" set of rules. We are anxious to receive such
suggestions by private mail or public posting.
Mitch Kapor (mkapor@eff.org)
Electronic Frontier Foundation and CIX Board
and
Dave Farber (farber@cis.upenn.edu)
University of Pennsylvania and EFF Board
Affiliations are given for identification. The view are those of
the authors.
