[10452] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: bill to insure flat rate Internet email pricing (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James Love)
Thu Feb 24 05:27:35 1994
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 1994 23:33:57 -0500 (EST)
From: James Love <love@essential.org>
To: Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com>
Cc: welch@oar.net, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <199402232013.AA22012@world.std.com>
On Wed, 23 Feb 1994, Barry Shein wrote:
> The point being that flat-rates do not make costs go away, they only
> average them across everyone.
Sure, who would argue with that. But I would say that the democratic
discourse we have today on the internet is worth preserving, and even
doing something to keep.
If it becomes expense to run a list, then large corporate groups will
decide what's important, and we'll see something similar to what we have
on public tv (although not as bad), were what we see (or read) determined
by the deep pocket corporate sponsor you can get.
Now, that future may not bother you, but it does bother me. I find
the charm of the net the democratic nature of the discussions. This is
real important. Perhaps important enough for some smart technical people
to figure out how to separate the non-commercial mail from the rest,
cheaply, and without reading everyone's mail (not that non-profit postal
mail is opened by anyone).
I think that people who think that flat rate pricing is a trivial
issue haven't thought about how we got where we are, and how things could
change. Don't forget, some of the NSF Internet grant recipients run
such great services as Prodigy and MCI Mail.
jamie
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James Love, Taxpayer Assets Project; internet: love@essential.org
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036; v. 202/387-8030; f. 202/234-5176
12 Church Road, Ardmore, PA 19003; v. 215/658-0880; f. 215/649-4066
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