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From: eff.org!mnemonic@world.std.com (Mike Godwin)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: More on BBSs and Phone Rates
Message-ID: <72153@bu.edu.bu.edu>
Date: 12 Jan 91 15:30:20 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 30, Message 1 of 10


The Moderator writes:

>[Moderator's Note: Well then, if the development of a virtual
>community is what you find important, it should be okay, and
>encouraged to have all the 900/976 ladies and gentlemen selling
>fantasy sex over the phone switch to residential rates. After all,
>they have the same old callers day after day, as do the non-sexual
>chat lines. Those tend to be virtual communities also.

This is an untenable reach on your part, Pat. BBSs are not like
900/976 chatlines. If you think they are, then you must have been
calling a very different sort of BBS from the ones I've experienced
over the last decade.

Apparently, I need to explain the word "community." It does not denote
two people talking out each other's fantasies.  Nor does it denote
rape-crisis hotlines, which are also, generally, two-person
interactions.

Virtual communities give rise to colloquies, not merely dialogs, Pat.
More than two people can talk with each other at once, and the
relationship is not structured the way 976 lines and rape-crisis lines
are, with one person invariably seeking some particular kind of
service or information from the other, and often paying for it.

If 976 lines are what come to your mind when I use the word
"community," then I've learned quite a bit more about how you think
than I knew before, Pat.  :-)

Our Moderator asks why Compuserve shouldn't get residential rates
since Compuserve is a virtual community. The answer, of course , is
that Compuserve is a commercial service, Pat. Most BBSs are not.

I'm not advocating residential rates for all virtual communities.  I'd
just like to see them for the very small-scale virtual communities
that arise on hobbyist BBSs. Your passion for seeing that these BBSs
pay residential rates will wipe a great number of them out, Pat.  This
is a loss that should be avoided.

John Higdon's elegant solution has yet to be fully addressed here, by
the way. Higdon suggests that residential rates be the rates that are
charged to *residences*. What a concept.


Mike Godwin, (617) 864-0665   
mnemonic@eff.org    Electronic Frontier  Foundation                 


[Moderator's Note: I'll have a colloquy of my own in response to all
this in the next issue of the Digest or the one following.   PAT]