[868] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Software Sales via e-mail
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean Donelan)
Thu Jun 27 15:07:01 1991
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1991 14:05:16 CDT
From: SEAN@dranet.dra.com (Sean Donelan)
To: com-priv@psi.com, jrr@concert.net
X-Vmsmail-To: SMTP%"com-priv@psi.com",SMTP%"jrr@concert.net"
Its been about 18 months since I talked to the corporate folks about this, so
some of this may be tainted by memory lapse. But the general problem seemed
that our "stuff" is highly valuable, confidential, trade secrets (or whatever
the magic words are). There doesn't seem to be a problem sending it through
the U.S. Postal service, although when something is sent to a government site
we put a "restricted rights" label on the tape.
The corporate folks felt it would be prudent to assume that when something
was sent through the Internet it would be considered "made public." I think
it has something to do with maintaining control, or access to the information.
Both concepts seem to be oxymorans when applied to the workings of the Internet.
So if someone put their workstation in promiscuous mode and picked up a copy,
we may not be able to claim that it was "secret." However other protections,
such as Copyright, that don't depend on as tight control would still be
effective.
So even if NSF allowed "commercial" use of the Internet, that wouldn't mean
that corporations would take them up on it.
--
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO 63132-1806
Domain: sean@dranet.dra.com, Voice: (Work) +1 314-432-1100
