[97] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: NSF censoring sites around the Internet
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eliot)
Sun Nov 11 18:14:34 1990
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 90 15:03:13 -0800
From: lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot)
To: gnu@toad.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
I concur with John Gilmore, but for slightly different (although
possibly overlapping) reasons. Erik Fair has a favorite saying that
I love to repeat:
Only two things can kill USENET - a nuclear war or an act
of Congress.
I would hope that we don't need a demonstration of the former; the
NEA demonstrated the latter quite well.
When the government grants money for a purpose other than in support
of its existence, it is a subsidy. NSFNET is a government subsidy to
research and education for the purpose of the development of an
national electronic (photonic?) infrastructure.
Questions: what happens when its all built up? When does the support
end? Will there be another great divestiture? Why can't industry
build up the networks for us? Why should the government interfere if
there are companies willing to step in and create a market?
I could answer those questions with a rather large missive, and
perhaps I will at some point, so here's a little preview.
The government has the ability to kill any market it wishes to
monopolize - networking is no different. In this case, however, not
only is it monopolizing the market by paying the cost for the cross
country lines (virtually establishing a natural monopoly), but its
agents, the regionals are not servicing every request based on usage
restrictions. PSI and Alternet are small potatoes, that could grow
into rather large farms, were it not for NSF. Is this optimal?
In response to one of Kent England's earlier messages, many
universities are already in a position to charge their PIs a ``network
access'' charge. That charge should just be figured into the grant.
Rather than presuming that PIs should be expected to know something
about networking, let the individual sites figure a way to divide the
bill among the grants. Otherwise you're doing too much central
planning.
--
Eliot Lear
[lear@turbo.bio.net]
