[10458] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: bill to insure flat rate Internet email pricing (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Glenn S. Tenney)
Thu Feb 24 06:06:38 1994
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 03:05:20 -0800
To: James Love <love@essential.org>, com-priv@psi.com
From: tenney@netcom.com (Glenn S. Tenney)
Jamie, You seem to have started this thread on two different lists, but
didn't do it with a single message. Therefore, the following was sent to
telecom-reg and not here. I'm posting it here since perhaps this is where
you're looking for comments. (I added a paragraph at the end)
I think that this has missed the key point: The public needs to have both
guaranteed access to the Internet (at a price), and that that access be at
a flat rate based on the bandwidth of the connection (ie. the size of the
pipe paid for).
Email is the WRONG basis!!!
What does "providing email" mean? Does that mean that I have to allocate
disk space for a mailbox of any size? What if I give you flat rate email,
but your mbox can only be 1024 characters large?
This proposal misses the point dramatically and what's worse, skews the
attention and discussion away from what we really need to be worried
about... access. Give people access, and then let the market forces take
charge to offer email services at a variety of rates and with a variety of
features. A flat rate of a few dollars a month might be a traumatic
hardship to some people barely able to come up with the money for a 10 year
old used computer and a 300 baud modem, but they might be willing to pay
ten cents a message for the one or two they will send a month.
Email is a store-and-forward process. That means that if I subscribe for
email, then someone has to store it up and then send it to me when I check
my mail. With your scheme, under what circumstances can providers limit
the amount of your un-read (or heaven forbid, read mail -- remember, some
systems allow you to read your mail and leave it in the mailbox) mail? If
providers limit your mail to one message, then they might perform to the
letter of the law, but to no avail. Even if they limit it to 10,000
messages, that 10,001 message might be the one that is the essence of a
true democracy. Where do you draw the line?
---
Glenn Tenney
tenney@netcom.com Amateur radio: AA6ER
(415) 574-3420 Fax: (415) 574-0546
