[ga] A blast from the past ... We are all engaged in activities relating to, or in support of, official US Government business.
We all remember Mark Crispin of the icann famed crispy crocket twins who said "We are all engaged in activities relating to, or in support of, official US Government business." Thats icann in a nutshell. Here is a blast from the past - its an email message using the old arpanet email rules. Enjoy. Joe 10-MAY-78 23:20:30-PDT,3281;000000000001 Mail-from: SU-AI rcvd at 7-MAY-78 2058-PDT Date: 7 May 1978 2057-PDT From: MRC at SU-AI (Mark Crispin) Subject: MSGGROUP# 696 in reply to Jake's message about advertising To: MsgGroup at USC-ISI Redistributed-To: [ISI]<MsgGroup>Mailing.List;154: Redistributed-By: STEFFERUD (connected to MSGGROUP) Redistributed-Date: 8 MAY 1978 I agree with Jake about suppressing advertising for many of the same reasons as I disagreed with suppressing subjective messages about QUASAR. The ARPAnet is not, as Jake pointed out, a public resource; it is available to pretty much a select group of people (high school kids regardless!). We are all engaged in activities relating to, or in support of, official US Government business. ARPAnet mail therefore is more of an "interoffice memo" sort of thing than a trade journal, not intended for public distribution although not "top secret" either. Even MsgGroup is in this class; however inappropriate QUASAR is to MsgGroup's intent (and it was inappropriate) I feel that any censorship can only lead to worse things later on. I am sure that DCA realizes this also; otherwise the ARPAnet would have been curbed long ago. Whether or not QUASAR is a fake is a valid topic to be discussed among the computer science community via the ARPAnet; although it is inappropriate for MsgGroup. If there is sufficient interest, another group should be created whose purpose and interests embrace this issue. I don't see any place for advertising on the ARPAnet, however; certainly not the bulk advertising of that DEC message. From the address list, it seems clear to me that the people it was sent to were the Californians listed in the last ARPAnet directory. This was a clear and flagrant abuse of the directory! I am not sure as to how far this should be carried though. I would not mind hearing from DEC about their new products via ARPAnet mail, but I would expect considerably more technical content and considerably less of a sales pitch. Where is the line to be drawn between this sort of thing (if it is to be allowed at all) and advertising? Another point Jake mentioned which concerns me is that of employment hunting (by employee or employer). Is that to be taken to mean that a person cannot establish contacts at another ARPAnet site and poke around about a possible position there? Is this really unfair to non-ARPAnet people? Allow me to point out that at times a job is created in order to have a particular person on the staff, and if that person is unavailable, the job won't exist. This all seems worthy of examination by the MsgGroup community, as it involves how electronic mail is to be used. Something else; I would greatly appreciate it if all comments about this make a distinction between ARPAnet mail and mail on another (possibly commercial) network. Saying that electronic junk mail is a no-no on the ARPAnet doesn't answer the question. I shudder to think about it, but I can envision junk mail being sent to people who implement Dialnet, and no way it could be prevented or stopped. I guess the ultimate solution is the command in your mail reading subsystem which deletes an unwanted message. -- Mark ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --
Joe Baptista www.publicroot.org
PublicRoot Consortium
----------------------------------------------------------------
The future of the Internet is Open, Transparent, Inclusive,
Representative & Accountable to the Internet community @large.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Office: +1 (202) 517-1593
Fax: +1 (509) 479-0084begin:vcard fn:Joe Baptista n:Baptista;Joe org:PublicRoot Consortium adr:;;963 Ford Street;Peterborough;Ontario;K9J 5V5 ;Canada email;internet:baptista@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx title:PublicRoot Representative tel;fax:+1 (509) 479-0084 tel;cell:+1 (416) 912-6551 x-mozilla-html:FALSE url:http://www.publicroot.org version:2.1 end:vcard
|