[9610] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Is advertising relevant
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barney Wolff)
Fri Jan 14 03:27:47 1994
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 94 03:02:57 -0500
From: Barney Wolff <barney@databus.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
>From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
>
>For example, on The World we have a rather high limit for e-mail
>beyond which a charge starts kicking in.
> ...
>Of course, that's more difficult when a site is direct-connected.
> ...
>Remember, someone sells you that net connection, and you enter into a
>contract with that someone. So, say some sort of charge for certain
>types of e-mail were required as part of a mutual transit agreement
>between network providers (e.g. CIX or similar)? That's not well
>thought out, but something like that could work.
One of the clear advantages of host-based access! The problem with
any sort of CIX solution is that what's being passed are the pure IP
packets, and it's certainly against tradition to look at the higher
layers (the notion of CIX as firewall would be bizarre, yes?).
Anyway, how do we tell unsolicited ads from legit mail, at the router?
Beyond technical issues, which I suppose are eventually solvable, is
the real issue of free speech vs privacy. Barring governmental action,
as with junk faxes, can a provider really get away with saying you can
have the bandwidth for some uses but not others? Can an inter-provider
exchange? What if the demon-advertiser pays the $10K to CIX and makes
the mail appear to come from a horde of phantom shills on phantom
networks, all selflessly recommending this wonderful product? (btw,
is it actually against any law to make a message appear to come from
an address which is not your own, as long as it is not anybody else's
either? I don't think so, as aliases are used legitimately.)
While I'm digressing, is there any real difference between a press
release, an ad not quoting price, and a full ad? Every one is
a message in my box.
Folks not in .com would say that this is a case for government. Much
as I instinctively shrink from it, I haven't yet heard a better solution.
Barney Wolff, Pres. Voice: 914-591-6572
Databus Inc. Fax: 914-591-5677
15 Victor Drive Internet: barney@databus.com
Irvington, NY 10533-1919 USA "At the corner of database & datacomm"
