[118] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
use guidelines
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Craig Partridge)
Mon Nov 12 09:32:08 1990
To: farber@central.cis.upenn.edu
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
From: Craig Partridge <craig@NNSC.NSF.NET>
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 90 09:09:35 -0500
> Anyone have the energy to try to formulate such a set of guidelines?
Dave:
I've argued for some time that instead of network-wide use guidelines,
we have mailing list guidelines. So for example, com-priv might declare
itself to be "For the purposes of discussing commercialization and
privatization of Internet networks. Use of this list for advertising
or product announcements is prohibited," whereas SUN-FLASH might declare
itself to be "An electronic journal distribution list for discussion of
SUN products; advertising germane to SUN products is permitted."
I suggest this for two reasons:
(1) It shifts much of the burden of justification from the sender to
the receiver (which is desirable). Provided the sender submits a
message to the list which meets the list guidelines, s/he is OK.
The receiver who decides to subscribe to the list has to decide if
the material on the list is relevant to his/her work (and thus meets
NSFNET guidelines).
(2) Once we get to the point where the network is commercial, we
will want some mechanisms in place to constrain commercialization
(i.e. to prohibit mailing advertisements to technical discussion
lists). We might as well put them in place now.
Craig
