Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!crdgw1!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: UUPSI's new rules
Message-ID: <12312497@bfmny0.BFM.COM>
Date: 28 Mar 91 01:05:12 GMT
References: <40584@cup.portal.com> <61034439@bfmny0.BFM.COM> <-EBAZ+5@xds13.ferranti.com>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Lines: 34

In article <-EBAZ+5@xds13.ferranti.com> peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <61034439@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes:
>> I only make a point of all this because... this is what it's going to be
>> like, more and more, as capitalism hits the Net.  You're going to see
>> this odd mix of practices and personalities impacting things.
>
>But we've always had that: Domain versus bang paths, rabid rerouters
>versus literalists, and so on. Look at the BITNET gateway stuff. Politics
>is an unfortunately major pasttime on the net, as it is in any collection
>of people. This is just more of the same.

I'm afraid I can't agree.

Yes, politics and controversy of one sort have been a recurrent fact of
net administrative life for some time.  But these have largely been of a
technical or practical nature.  What's new is the ETHICAL, motivational,
even cultural aspect.

Although the *technical* debate over rabid rerouting or heterogeneous
network gatewaying can get pretty hot, at least we are not treated to
transplanted sales types spewing Rotarian commonplaces about the way
"the market is going."  The common, underlying assumption of the Net I
know is that moving as much data as possible to as many people as
possible is the MAIN priority.  The debate simply rages over the best
way to do it.

It used to be that no big net player would *demean* itself by squatting
on a perfectly functional, standard, available resource -- technically
completely ready to go -- and refuse to pass data because it was
insufficiently lucrative.  But that's what we're starting to see.  And
it's going to get worse before -- if -- it gets better.


Usenet will have to choose between Babbage and Babbitt.