From: utzoo!decvax!aps
Newsgroups: net.general
Title: Commercial uses of the network
Article-I.D.: decvax.471
Posted: Sat Apr 16 14:37:48 1983
Received: Mon Apr 18 21:43:06 1983

The following message came accros my terminal today.

       >From decwrl!sun!megatest!fortune!twg!anne (Anne Wunderlich)
       Fri Apr 15 17:55:42 1983
       Subject: new TWG service!
       Newsgroups: net.eunice
       
       
       ************************************************************
       *            Attention All EUNICE Users!                   *
       ************************************************************
       
       The Wollongong Group (TWG) is  pleased  to  announce  a  new
       service --
       
            The Electronic Modification Request Service (EMRS)
       
       This service is now available for  all  TWG  EUNICE  Clients
       holding a TWG Maintenance Agreement, or EUNICE Users who are
       under a TWG warranty.
       
       The system provides all EUNICE sites subscribing to USENET a
       fast and easy way to report modification requests.
       
       To obtain more information on EMRS,  and  an  Electronic  MR
       Form,  send  your  System  Administrator (or your authorized
       site representative's name) and USENET address,  along  with
       your TWG License Number to:
       
       		      Anne Wunderlich
       			(twg!anne)
       		 The Wollongong Group, Inc.
       

Note that this was submitted to net.eunice on the UNIX network.

Now, I do not want to open a can of worms, but the question should be
asked:  Should the network be used by people providing a service for
commercial gain???  It is one thing to allow "informational"
announcements (advertising) but it is really another matter when the
network is used as the communications media for a service offering.
Should the network nodes have to carry the cost of commercial uses of
the network now?  I think not.  I think that TWG should be required to
connect to each machine that they provide a service to.

Using the network to "rendezvous" with TWG (as one would with a
phone number) is fine with me.  But once contact is established, the
customer and TWG should establish their own seperate link(s) or subnet.
Allowing this kind of activity to go on will mean certain death in thr
form of an overflow of traffic on the Net when companies like IBM, DG,
or DEC get into electronic Trouble/Modification Requests.  (We plan to
look into this for SPR's for UNIX but it would be a seperate "star"
network with the center in our Colorado Springs facility.)

Further, I think it presumptuous of TWG to announce this "service"
without some effort to poll the people who manage some of the nodes
of the network.

Anne Wonderlick, forgive me if you did poll and I didn't see it.


		Armando Stettner
		DEC UNIX Engineering Group.