[2636] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The AUP, Common Sense, and the Emperor's Clothes
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Curran)
Tue Mar 24 19:27:50 1992
To: Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com>
Cc: LAWS@ai.sri.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 24 Mar 92 18:10:53 -0500.
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 92 19:26:01 -0500
From: John Curran <jcurran@nic.near.net>
--------
From: Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com>
Subject: The AUP, Common Sense, and the Emperor's Clothes
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 92 18:10:53 -0500
...
Let's face it, we've built a world-wide postal system with basically
flat per-year rates which only really constrains the common citizen of
modest means (and even that's breaking down thank to people like me
:-), but is wide open and cheap cheap cheap for organizations (e.g.
under $20K/year for unlimited communications access to millions, I'll
guess that UW spends more than that per day on communications.)
It's a brave new world.
I don't think laws or regulations per se (like AUP) are quite the
right head-on approach, they should exist to cover the periphery of
activity only, restricting that which is truly undesireable under all
conditions.
I'd like to see harder thinking about installing the time-honored
feedback loop: $$$. Works for the post office and phone company...
It doesn't quite work for the phone company; note the recent rash of laws
regarding telemarketing despite the fact that many of the calls are long-
distance and thus a proportional expense incurred by the telemarketer.
A feedback loop is definitely needed if the current damping (read: AUP) is
lifted. One might claim that paying an additional annual fee for commercial
access (as is proposed by one backbone service provider) provides such a
system, particularly if the proceeds are used to increase the infrastructure.
A more granular system for cost recovery may not result in more responsible
behavior, since the actual of cost of delivering a single mail message is
quite low and getting less expensive each day. If the Internet community
wants certain "content-based" behaviors, such as no bulk solicitations, some
form of acceptable usage policy will remain long after the commercial use
issues have been settled.
/John
