Re: Free Email

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>Travis Thompson <etechojt@juno.com>
>
>Juno is a company that offers FREE email accounts.
>
>It is so free, that if they don't have a local number
>for you to call, they have your computer call their
>800 number.
>
>It is supported by advertising, done in a very slick
>and unobtrusive way.
>

So people's phone bills are being asked to subsidize
a business promoting advertising and to invite this advertising
into public schools and public libraries?

The Internet was developed in a way that strictly limited advertising
via an Acceptible Use Policy and that helped to make possible
the important communication resource that was developed.

And there was a reason for this, among which is that there is a 
reason not to use tax money to subsidize advertising for companies.

It is to abandon the lessons and strength of this history to promote
advertising and to say that to read email one has to be willing to
put up with advertising, and then to call this "universal service".

To encourage subsidizing such advertising by promoting its use 
and recommending advertising be put into schools and libraries 
shows the problems that develop when there aren't public principles 
guiding public policy.


Ronda
rh120@columbia.edu

----------
                Netizens: On the History and Impact
                   of Usenet and the Internet
                http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
          see Chapter 12 - "Imminent Death of the Net Predicted" 

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