[10621] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Of Tastes and Preferences - proposal 940228
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Pierre Uszynski)
Tue Mar 1 23:01:43 1994
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 1994 00:43:54 -0800
From: Pierre Uszynski <pierre@shell.portal.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: pierre@nova.unix.portal.com
Of Tastes and Preferences - proposal 940228
While references to "Internet Culture" florish in reasonned
discussions, flames, grandiose proposals, and demagogic magazine
articles alike, it is becoming clear (at least to me) that everybody
has a different idea of what the Internet should look like (at least
from their account) and what rules of etiquette need apply.
So why not allow individual account holders, and individual sites
to let it known how they like it. This would give would-be offenders
(you and I, eventually) the opportunity to avoid offending, or at least
to offend in a fully informed fashion :-)
Various directory systems could list these preferences, also finger
could report them as they are listed in a .plan file, and email agents
could return them without intervention, in response to simple requests.
Two things are needed: Standard ways to retrieve the preferences,
and standard ways to express them.
A) Preferences could be expressed in the time-honored
switch format. See samples below.
B) Preferences could be retrieved as part of any and
all of:
1) Finger-returned .plan file.
2) Email auto-response (see below).
3) Directory information.
Unfortunately, email has the potential to reach the most people,
while extremely few of these people are currently equipped for
auto-response. Email auto-response should then be reserved for later,
and finger and directories preferred for now.
Requests regarding individual switches, of course, are addressed
to the individual account. Requests pertaining to the site are addressed
to a standard account such as: postmaster@site.net
In the mean time, .plan files, and directories could contain
switches such as:
(listed as <switch> <possible values>)
accept-for-profit-advertising yes,no,header-flagged
accept-not-for-profit-advertising yes,no,header-flagged
allowed-use any,personal,business
maximum-message-size 250000,...
email-messages-copyright copyright,yes,no,copyleft,public-domain
list-messages-copyright copyright,yes,no,copyleft,public-domain
netnews-posts-copyright copyright,yes,no,copyleft,public-domain
allows-unsollicited-directory-listing yes,no
allows-unsollicited-list-inclusion yes,no
allows-unsollicited-email yes,no,send-to-secretary@site.net
allows-public-anonymous-ftp yes,no,8pm-6amEST,...
logs-anonymous-ftp yes,no
allows-automatic-ftp-scan yes,no,8pm-6amEST,...
allows-automatic-gopher-scan yes,no,8pm-6amEST,...
age 12,18,>21,minor,...
is-local-minor-age yes,no
accepts-MIME-email yes,no
accepts-PGP-email yes,no
accepts-PEM-email yes,no
accepts-anonymous-email yes,no
welcomes-flames gladly,in-dev-null,<insult>
PGP-public-key <PGP key>
I'm sure you guys will think of more. But if we can agree on a
basic set of switches and values, it is fairly easy for people and
programs to look these up (for the individual and the site), and make
sense of them, depending on the offense one stands ready to commit.
On the minus side, I can think of plenty of switches that I would
hate to see become de-facto standards for the account owner's legal
protection... Implementing self-censorship over incoming material as
a defense against the reception of locally-censored unsollicited materials.
It seems to me such a system would cut on the amount of flames over
anonymity, advertising, sale of mailing lists, etc... Let's hear if
some directories already propose this system, or whatever feedback I
can get.
Pierre Uszynski
pierre@shell.portal.com
