[1773] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Fair competition
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Manavendra K. Thakur)
Thu Dec 19 16:18:07 1991
To: Alex McKenzie <mckenzie@BBN.COM>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 19 Dec 91 08:08:01 -0500.
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 91 16:13:20 EST
From: "Manavendra K. Thakur" <thakur@zerkalo.harvard.edu>
>>>>> On Thu, 19 Dec 91 8:08:01 EST, Alex McKenzie <mckenzie@BBN.COM> said:
> Obviously I would have liked to see the competition for NSFNET based
> solely on technical merit, not amount of contribution, but that's
> not the way the game was played and the community accepted the
> cooperative agreement approach. I think that by accepting a
> non-level playing field then, the community gave up its right to
> bitch about it now.
This is silly. If mistakes were made then, then what possible
justification is there for blindly perpetuating them now?
There are some serious public policy issues at stake here -- not to
mention privacy and First Amendment rights -- and it's entirely
possible that in 1985-1986 not everyone was aware of the full import
or relevance of issues vis a vis computer networking infrastructure.
It's also possible that not everyone following/participating in the
debate today were in a position to do so five years ago. The debate
has been joined by people who were not involved in networking back
then, and there is no justification for disparaging their
contributions or denying them a fair chance to be heard.
In sum, I see no grounds for claiming that the community gave up any
rights at all.
Manavendra K. Thakur Internet: thakur@zerkalo.harvard.edu
Systems Programmer, High Energy Division BITNET: thakur@cfa.BITNET
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for DECNET: CFA::thakur
Astrophysics UUCP: ...!uunet!mit-eddie!thakur
