[1903] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Understanding Combits
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Tue Jan 7 14:22:10 1992
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 92 14:21:09 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Sean Donelan's message of Tue, 7 Jan 1992 7:06:54 CST <920107070654.12067@SDG.DRA.COM>
Asking if residences are for-profit is interesting, but it's actually
much wierder and more uncharted than this conversation would belie.
Where is the split where the end-user's status is the issue and the
provider's status is the issue?
If the end-user is not-for-profit, but the vendor providing him with
access is for-profit, is access for-profit or not-for-profit?
At what point does the proverbial man become an island? Is it the
activity? The IRS status? The fact that the organization holding the
IRS status also holds a network number? ??
Here's something more concrete for those of you wondering what I am
talking about:
We (ST&D) provide logins for people, for a price, on a machine
connected to the Internet.
Currently that machine is limited to the CIX (via Alternet.)
So end-users using that machine are also limited, regardless of their
activities.
If they used SLIP to get to that system reliably rather than
V.42/MNP/etc would they suddenly, by virtue of running TCP flavored
bits and having an address (even temporarily, ah, another factor)
assigned to their machine be "islands" and hence subject to NSF usage
policies individually rather than inheriting that of their vendor
(us)?
Before you jump on this as being simple, let's take the opposite case.
Universities often sell "spare" computing time to for-profit
organizations. This is most common in the IBM Mainframe type of data
center, I assume it also goes on in super-computer centers.
Those machines generally provide full access to the internet for such
customers. Thus, the for-profit end-user has inherited the
not-for-profit status (vis a vis NSF policies) from its vendor. Would
anyone argue that such a machine's attachment to the internet provides
added-value to those for-profit customers?
It's all very wierd if you actually look at it closely.
-Barry Shein
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