[2299] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
commercial use and billing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Craig Partridge)
Wed Feb 5 17:13:19 1992
To: drw@bourbaki.mit.edu
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Reply-To: Craig Partridge <craig@aland.bbn.com>
From: Craig Partridge <craig@aland.bbn.com>
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 92 14:08:36 -0800
> 1) There is still an intense prejudice against commercial
> (money-grubbing) usage of the computer networks.
I'm actually seeing less and less of this. Certainly many of the regional
providers have long since stopped fussing about who uses the network. The
key concern that still worries folks is the potential for counter-productive
commercial use (e.g. advertising, junk e-mail, etc.).
> 2) People have an intense resistance to pay-per-use billing, as it
> makes their personal contribution to Internet loading visible to their
> institution (which is paying for it).
I believe this in unfair. At least in the corporate world, most of the
costs have been visible for some time. My company knows what it cost for
my phone, computer, disk system and (since I use dial-up IP from a commercial
carrier), my network connection. Both I and my employer know what load
I inject.
However, pay-per-use (as in pay-per-packet or call) has the very nasty
feature that it isn't very predictable. For example, my home phone bill
can vary by a factor of 4 per month, and my office bill phone bill varies
by even more. Unpredictable usage causes all sorts of problems because it
is hard to budget. That's why you hear lots of us lobbying for fixed-price
services.
Craig
