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From: werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin,misc.legal,misc.misc,misc.forsale
Subject: Re: Portal Lowers Rates for Telenet Access
Summary: isn't this hypocritical?
Message-ID: <2923@utastro.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jul 88 18:48:40 GMT
References: <32208@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 65

In article <32208@pyramid.pyramid.com>, cquenel@pyrglass (Chris Quenelle) writes:
> In article <2618@kitty.UUCP> larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes:
> >	What right does Portal Communications have to permit, solicit and
> >charge for access to the ARPANET?  Does anyone from DARPA know that Portal
> >is engaging in this activity?
> 
> I hope to god my company doesn't have to "affiliate" itself with 
> EVERY institution I can reach through the net.

Right-on, Chris.
 
 While I don't like the Portal-ad much myself (mentioning ARPA was "unwise",
to put it mildly) - but then I don't like most advertising hype  .....

....but Larry calling the ARPA-rulemaker genie and the lawyers out of
the bottle isn't that smart either.

Reminders of the time some years back when discussion in public about gateways
for mail from and to the ARPAnet was frowned on by administrators, while
they would exchange that kind of information without hesitation in private
to their buddies ...

Now we have domains and official gateways and name-servers and we can
talk about such things and I've seen even questions about reaching
commercial mail-nets like ATTmail and MCmail without never a raised
finger ...

So here comes this little site Portal, which offers NEWS and Email so
cheap that I'd not be surprised if companies would find it cheaper to take
their hosts of the net and have their people get an account on Portal.

It must be run by amateurs and be, in effect, non-profit or close to it
(or how else can you explain the price they charge?) and so they aren't
blessed with wisdom of a 10-year ARPAnet-user; and so they do get into
a little advertising hype to make their enterprise a going concern ...

Hey, give the guys a break, educate them with Email (I did, telling them
that I was not thrilled to receive their ad in my personal mailbox -
shades of electronic junkmail to come [apparently I had been added to
some mailing-list when I sent them a query about their site when they
first showed up on the net] - and I suggested that the proper place
to post such an ad might be in comp.new-prod... [no, I didn't tell them
not to mention ARPA; I never read junkmail that closely; I wished I had].

The day may come when we all will be glad that people without access
to the "blessed" networks can get an account on a commercial machine
at a reasonable cost to send us Email, without us being required to
pay for an account on a commercial machine also to be able to receive
the mail.

Some may want to keep an eye on the business practices of these commercial
Usenet NEWS-and-EMAIL sites (whoever provides the connection should,
probably, feel obliged to do this more so than the net, in general)
and it may even be advisable that someone writes up some guidelines for them
to follow (or get cut off?!) - but all that is really more bureaucracy than
can be handled by USEnet/UUCPnet (no such organizations exist, on purpose;
these terms only describe the fact that there are a bunch of computers in the
world through which people exchange messages and information.  There is
noone to sue - no lawyers need inquire :-)

-- 
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