[18] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
re: I'm prepared to be told "no".
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Craig Partridge)
Thu Oct 18 10:41:37 1990
To: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
From: Craig Partridge <craig@NNSC.NSF.NET>
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 90 08:22:41 -0400
John:
I don't know of anyone that believes the current situation is optimal
except lawyers (who enjoy the prospect of income). The question I believe
is how much pain do you want to go through to get to the optimal situation
(general commercial access)?
I don't believe a firm "no" on commercial access helps the transition --
it just hurts everyone. It is an unpleasant fact of life that to get
this whole networking thing going, the Feds had to plug a lot of $$ in
early (if they hadn't we wouldn't be having this debate, which in principle
is about how valuable this network the Feds created is). Now that the
Feds have succeeded, they have to find a way to leave the scene gracefully
(or at least, considerably reduce their role). THEY KNOW THAT.
Beating them over the head with a problem they're trying to fix seems
(a) ungrateful, and (b) likely to make transition planning harder because
by forcing the Feds to make explicit policy, you restrict their flexibility.
Further, the comment about the Feds prefer to taking it from us and
then give it away is inconsistent with past NSF history on networking.
For example, NSF created CSNET in 1980 with some seed funding and the
charter to be self-supporting within a few years. CSNET became self
supporting right on schedule (actually a somewhat ahead of schedule),
and was the initial model for the regional networks. I don't believe
the Feds want to play big brother on networking -- problem was, no
one else existed in the early 1980s willing to fork over the $$ necessary
to make a big Internet happen.
Craig
