RE: regulating the internet

[Kevlar <kevlar@smartlink.net>]

Which rasies another issue...

I personally have always forseen the day when you will be charged by the
megabyte, and not the minuite. Picture this...

Your at the air port, and you need to see if a very important email has
arived... you walk to the nearest phone booth, which cosists of nothing
more than a little plastic booth for you to stand in, and an rj-11. No
handset, no keypad, no coin slot... just a jack. You take out your palmtop
computer, plug it into the jack, type in your password, download your
e-mail and attachments (about 7 meg in all, large attachments) and press
the Logoff button. A little window appears with the AT&T logo in the corner
and says:

Thank you for using AT&T for all your digital needs.
Total use: 7101k
Total charge: $0.71
$0.71 has been billed to your MASTERCARD.

Could you see ISP's and phone companys alike JUMPING on this?

There's a slew of questions that this raises... do you get charged for
uploading too? is it a different pricing system for uploading? do you get
charged less? more? is there such a thing as a free address, like our
present (800) or (888) numbers in which the recipiant picks up the tab? 

And most importantly... does it cost more to send your packet further away?
to another country?

I think I just slamed this idea into a virtual brick wall... Comments,
ideas, and criticisims are always welcome!


At 03:23 PM 4/2/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Your question is too vague to get any kind of simple answer.
>
>Regulate *what* exactly? Protocol standards? Pricing? Volume 

-Kevlar
<Kevlar@smartlink.net>

Oh, I'm sorry... Was I not suposed to EXPORT STRONG CRYPTO?
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo
"16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|
dc`

Beat your algorithms into swords and your virtual machines into spears...
Let the weak say, "I am strong".