[10477] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: bill to insure flat rate Internet email pricing (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gary Obermeyer)
Fri Feb 25 07:51:31 1994
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 13:48:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Gary Obermeyer <obee@netcom.com>
To: Roger Bohn <Rbohn@ucsd.edu>
Cc: welch@oar.net, love@essential.org, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <199402240246.SAA00329@ucsd.edu>
I've been very pleased with the flat rate as Netcom does it. Flat
monthly rate for unlimited access, plus fees for storage after a
certain amount. If you do mostly email and listservs and manage
folders well, the flat rate does just fine!
Gary
On Wed, 23 Feb 1994, Roger Bohn wrote:
> At 1:30 PM 2/23/94 -0500, welch@oar.net wrote:
> > An important feature of this is the requirement that the
> > Internet service include a FLAT RATE service for electronic mail
> > sent to and from non-commercial Internet discussion groups and
> > lists.
> >
> >How exactly are you proposing this be implemented?
> (material deleted)
>
> I sympathize with the goal, but not with the proposal.
>
> Ah, the magic allure of flat rates. It is much simpler just to specify
> (and require by law, if you want to got that far) that the first X
> kilobytes each month is free. Set X high enough that if people are reading
> text, it is a reasonable amouont. (For example 1 megabyte per month works
> out to about 6000 words per day - a hefty amount.)
>
> That way customers don't have to worry about whether site y is on
> someone's "approved non-commercial discussion group" list, and carriers
> don't have to scan headers (and invade the customer's privacy; do you want
> AT&T keeping a list of who you retrieve from?) Based on the discussions a
> few months ago, some users would demand the right to get a detailed message
> by message bill so that they could dispute it; and to deal with such
> things, AT&T would have to log every message. The waste and detailed
> administrative rule-making involved in this process would be immense. I
> don't want the California PUC to set detailed rules for my Internet access;
> I'd still be using a TTY.
>
> Furthermore, this does what it ought to with people who like to retrieve
> gigabytes of GIF files from NetNews sites and other pd sites; it makes the
> cost of such retrieval a commercial matter between them and their carrier.
> I for one do not want my base rates to cover other people who treat
> bandwidth as free, even if what they retrieve is "non-commercial". Allow
> me to sign up with a carrier who charges per megabyte, please.
>
> Roger Bohn
> Rbohn@ucsd.edu
>
>
>
