[10495] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Scenes from the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (ajs@merck.com)
Fri Feb 25 13:13:22 1994
From: ajs@merck.com
To: djw@eff.org, com-priv@psi.com
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 12:01:56 -0500 (EST)
Sculley: I want us to think seriously about assuring that schools and
libraries can have free access to information resources. Not just the
transport, but the content as well. Certainly this has a cost
attached to
it, but it would be an invaluable investment in our nation's future.
Operman: John, you couldn't mean that. If information is free than
it's
worth nothing.... I would be horror-stricken if the result of this
committee was a consensus that all library resources were available
for
free anywhere around the NII. That would put an end to the US
information
industry.
Yikes! What these so-called experts are missing is that if
the promise of NII is to be fulfilled, the level of
access any citizen has must at the very least duplicate
what they have in a non-digital world. Will I be able
to freely browse and use digital books like I can
at my neighborhood library? Will I be able to freely
browse around the electronic bookstore like I can in
the local Barnes & Noble superstore?
I know that there is a cost for my current "free" access,
but I'm perfectly willing for my tax money to support
digital access just like it currently supports the traditional
library.
--
Anthony Starks Merck Research Laboratories ajs@merck.com
