[175] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Finding material that went around the net awhile ago -- Amix
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bob)
Thu Nov 15 23:57:54 1990
To: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 15 Nov 90 02:35:54 PST."
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 90 15:42:56 +1100
From: Bob <smart@mel.dit.csiro.au>
> I know a startup company (American Information Exchange in Palo Alto)
> that wants to do something much like this. Trouble is, they can't do
> it over the Internet (it's commercial!) and they need a large pool
> of customers to even think about breaking even (they've gone through
> a good bit of venture money, built nice software & interfaces, etc).
Eh? Of course they can do it over the Internet for Research and Educational
users. If Research and Educational users contact a commercial service then
that must be in support of Research and Education: why else would they do it?
If I'm wrong about this then it is a very serious and silly situation. We
want to encourage new network services: that's the whole point of supporting
the network with public funds.
Of course such a service provider should actually connect to one of the
commercial networks which are attached to the Internet: they can then
also be contacted by commercial users on the commercial Internet. The
only remaining problem is commercial companies attached to the R&E part
of the Internet. Such companies are in an anomalous position and I don't
see how it can continue for long. If the regionals allow the commercial
companies to use the R&E Internet to get to commercial services then they
will be using public money to unfairly compete with the commercial TCP/IP
networks. Commercial companies who are on the R&E Internet but not on the
commercial Internet must remain very restricted in their activities.
However commercial companies connected to both should not be expected to
make packets go "the right way" since the IETF provides no tools to make
this possible.
On the subject of naughty pictures: It is not for the network people to
determine what is R&E activity. Universities guard their independence
very fiercely (I remember the reaction to police on campuses in Australia
during the Vietnam War). Each University must be left to decide for itself
what is appropriate R&E activity. Still I don't think it would be wrong
for a network administrator to advise someone at a University in the
following friendly terms: "We notice that you provide naughty pictures
for anonymous ftp. We don't want to tell you what is or is not appropriate
R&E activity. But given the network load that this causes, and the fact
that it may induce people in distant and more puritanical places to break
their local laws on viewing such material, and the fact that minors are
not explicitly excluded from the network, you might like to reconsider
whether making such material freely available is an appropriate R&E
activity." Certainly a better approach than "Get this filth off my network".
Bob Smart <smart@mel.dit.csiro.au>
