[10450] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
bill to insure flat rate Internet email pricing (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Wed Feb 23 17:20:13 1994
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 1994 15:13:41 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: love@essential.org
Cc: welch@oar.net, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: James Love's message of Wed, 23 Feb 1994 13:52:28 -0500 (EST) <Pine.3.85.9402231328.E8699-0100000@essential>
>From: James Love <love@essential.org>
>for all its problems, the NSF AUP did work at a fairly
>low cost (even if you support its demise).
Sure, non-enforcement is cheap, and it has no cost effects.
>> If non-commercial mail is free then messages from
>> commerce-related mailing lists will be charged a whole lot more to cover
>> costs. Do you really want to pay $10 for every message on com-priv? Are
> Hell, com-priv would qualify, since it is a non-commerical list.
>com-priv doesn't cost anything to receive, and it is not organized to
>sell anything, except ideas. the fact that psi is commerical is
>irrelevant, since the service is a non-commerical service.
Aha! And therein lies the rub (I suspect you fell for the bait),
define non-commercial. NSF/AUP isn't a good model because we know it's
basically unworkable in the current context and merely excludes most
everyone and everything. And it has almost no system for judgement and
has been hugely misinterpreted over and over. For example, how is
com-priv to be taken as being "in support of research and education"?
Except inasmuch as some in R&E have an interest, but the same can be
said about food (or Centrex pricing or a zillion other things.)
> No, flat rate pricing isn't free, last time we paid our providers
>bill anyway.
Nor is it necessarily low-cost. Would $1000/mo per e-mail account, no
extra per-message charge, fit your bill? I suspect it would.
Also, does charging per-hour online, mail storage, etc violate what
you are proposing?
I think regulating a business model tends to be a bad idea unless it's
very carefully thought out. You're just as likely to ensure bad access
for many as the flat-rate has to cover some worst-case situation, or
at least average situation, and that average can have a very skewed
distribution.
Thus, an individual of limited means has no ability to economize and
get some access but instead is forced to pay a fixed rate that is
guaranteed to reflect the top 49%. Swell, so people get to subsidize
their congresscritters sending out tens or hundreds of thousands of
e-mail msgs to their constituents thru averaged usage charges, etc.
It is the democratic ideal expressed in the comment "The law in its
infinite wisdom forbids both rich and poor from stealing bread,
begging in the streets and sleeping under bridges." That is, it
ensures subsidy from those least able to pay equal to that paid by
billionaires.
The point being that flat-rates do not make costs go away, they only
average them across everyone. Sometimes it makes sense, particularly
where the per-usage costs are negligible (e.g. cable tv, does it cost
more under current services for me to keep my TV on? No, not really),
but it's hardly a panacea. Be very careful where the usage costs
actually do exist, I think bandwidth, processing power etc are real
and non-negligible usage costs.
-Barry Shein
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