Universal Service/Network Democracy
Preliminaries

Table of Contents

How the Seminar Functions

There are two primary ingredients in the Universal Service/Network Democracy on-line seminar. The first is the Web site, which you are presently visiting. The second is a set of electronic mailing lists, which are described below.

If you want to participate in the seminar, you must register by completing the on-line registration form. If you don't have access to a Web browser which can handle on-line forms, you can send e-mail to register@info-ren.pitt.edu to request a registration form via electronic mail.

What is Authoritative
The activity with which this seminar is concerned is a complex legal proceeding. Seminar participants are at the periphery of this proceeding in the sense that we can make contributions based upon the personal experience that each of us brings to the discussion.

It is unlikely that anyone in the country can claim complete expertise in all of the disciplines - law, economics, technology and education - that are required in these proceedings. But by combining the skills of the various participants in this seminar, we should be able to master enough of these topics to be able to make significant contributions to the debate.

In the seminar there will be a moderator who presents a weekly agenda on the Web site and who facilitates the on-line discussion. The moderator's role is to provide a framework for discussion and to maintain some degree of order in the participants' contributions.

Given the remarks above, the moderator won't claim any over-arching expertise, and will welcome contributions from people who correct errors or offer additions to the on-line material. There exists space on the Web for contributions from all of the seminar's participants.

Registration
In order to participate in the Universal Service/Network Democracy on-line seminar, you must be registered. Information on registration options, instructions on how to register and a registration form are available on-line. Registration will remain open at least through September 1.

What's Required
Once you have registered for the seminar you will be subscribed to one of several possible mailing lists. These subscriptions enable you to post material to the seminar's on-line discussion. As a participant you will be expected to make regular contributions to the discussion. Specific expectations for each seminar participant are as follows:

How to Post

The primary mechanism for distributing materials relating to the seminar is a set of electronic mailing lists. These mailing lists will be archived on a weekly basis and made available through this Web site. To make a submission to the seminar, simply send a message to us-nd@info-ren.pitt.edu. You must be registered in order to participate. If you have not already registered for the seminar, please do so by filling out the on-line registration form.

Etiquette

Participants in the on-line seminar include people working for a variety of organizations in the fields of education, libraries, law, government and business. Each participant has joined the seminar as an individual, and seminar participants should interact with each other as individuals, not as representatives of the organizations with whom they may be affiliated. The FCC Docket includes hundreds of examples of official filings from organizations interested in the Universal Service provisions of the Telecommunications Act, and we will refer to this material often throughout the seminar. Individuals enrolled in the seminar may be able to help interpret some of these official filings, but they have not joined the seminar simply to explain their organization's views.

Library Resources

A major component of the Universal Service/Network Democracy project is an on-line repository of filings with the Federal Communications Commission on CC Docket 96-45, which deals with the Universal Service provisions of the Telecommuncations Act.

The FCC makes available through their Web site a variety of public notices and documents dealing with issues currently before them. We will maintain pointers to these and other documents relevant to the seminar, along with hypertext versions of the most important of these resources where they are not otherwise available.

Information produced during the seminar will also be placed on-line. This includes white papers and summaries of comments before the FCC which have been drafted by seminar participants.

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