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The internet has been around about 20 years in various forms. I've been on
it for about 19. At first it was mostly government and universitys, with
some research groups. People who had email and access to the news groups
were all very computer literate and understood that while it appeared to be
"free", there was a cost of time associated with bandwidth. Back then
really fast connections were 9600 baud, and the entire message base for
newsgroups could be read during part of lunch time.
About 1985 or so commercial computer companies started to hook into the
original government and education based net, the newsgroups expanded by an
order of magnitude about every quarter, connection speeds progressed to the
point that disk storage was the issue rather than connection speed forr the
limit of communication. To be realistic, you had to be selective about
which news groups you wanted to read, and email lists began to crop up that
were more specific in topic. Generally the email lists were much smaller
audiences, with fewer lurkers per poster. This is still true today.
1990 ISP's started showing up and offering internet access to people who
didn't work in government, education, or the computer industry. The
population of the "internet" grew rapidly, but for the most part if someone
had access to the internet they knew about computers and how the internet
worked. Hoaxes and viruses were only in vogue on the dial-up bbses,
usually oriented towards games or hacker groups, and were shared mostly as
example or exercise, but occaisionally they would be placed on innocent
systems as prank or maliciousness (usually by putting a floppy in the
computer to be affected). It was no longer possible to stay caught up on
more than a few of the popular news groups without spending a really large
amount of time.
1994 the first web pages and browsers were created, at first it was pretty
crude and not really seen as a viable means of communication, there was
very little interaction in web pages. Even today how many times have you
hit a link that was a couple years old? ISP's started to work on getting
the customer that had never used a computer for daily communication. The
numbers spread like wildfire. About 1996 I stopped reading news groups
since it took me almost an hour just to mark the groups I was "interested
in" as caught up (not even reading messages). Web pages replaced ftp sites
and gopher as a means of sharing files. Viruses that once needed to be
physically placed on computers, were now much more prevalent, as they could
be renamed and placed out for public consumption.
With the rapid growth of user bases, direct mailers and other get rich
quick schemers saw the news groups as a quick source of hundreds and
thousands of "potential customers". Here was a great demographic for them:
affluent enough to afford a computer, literate, usually intelligent. How
could they not cull addresses and store them in master lists to send out
mass mailings or sell to others? The once "free" internet was now a
commodity. Well truthfully it was always a commodity, but now the cost
(time and effort) was added to in personal connection fees. So bandwidth
really did cost money. They didn't see it that way (and still don't)
As the internet progresses closer to ubiquity, bandwidth, and the precious
time it takes to read the information you want to read will become harder
and harder to come by. There are other facets that are seeing the limit of
the current structure--witness domainnames. All this boils down to one
thing: If you like the way things have been in the past, more effort and
stringent rules will have to be enforced.
But where do you draw the line?
Certianly setting up a web page with hundreds of banner ads that pay that one
person money for each page view they get and then getting hundreds of
people to view that page by sending a message out to this list (and
hundreds of others) is wrong, but it has been seen by some as a viable way
of making money. How many of you have seen those companies that "pay you
to surf"?
What about if you have a single banner ad that your otherwise free web page
provider requires in exchange for the space and bandwith? OK? Sure, but
somewhere between these two examples the line was crossed.
Ebay makes $100's of millions of dollars a year based on their bandwidth,
the price of items being placed and sold. If an item gets pushed up due to
a bidding war, ebay is the one who wins, not the group of collectors at
large, not the bidders who fought with eachother, and certianly not me.
Getting more people to look at an ad means more potential bidders, and more
page views for the advertisers on ebay. Why should you give them this
service? Why should they (the seller of the item) get the benefit of
this "perfect demographic" for absolutely no effort or even with out their
knowledge?
How about if you have a box of bits in your shop that are gathering rust
and dust but you know they can be used by a fellow trucker? Sure go and
post it, even if you are selling it on ebay if its your ad, send a forward
blurb. But somewhere between these two examples is the line that was
crossed.
Common sense has become a comodity it seems. There are entire industries
based upon the fact that many out there are gulible (virus protection
software?) or don't think about what they are doing and how it effects
others (or even know what they are doing).
I run this list the way I wish all lists I was a member of were run. I
spend quite a bit of time on a daily basis keeping the ugly part of the
internet out there out of my trucks email. I like things the way they used
to be, and am willing to put in extra effort to make it that way. (I read
mail in a telnet session directly to my isp running unix--the same way I
have since 1983 but I've never downloaded a virus or had a MS word macro
eat my file space on my pc)
I don't know exactly where to draw the line, but I've been doing this a
long time and I think I have the expertise to judge when the line has been
crossed on a case by case basis. I hope that some of you have read this
lengthy message and have gotten something from it. IF not, well the delete
key works at any point in time, and I trust I didn't take too much of your
precious bandwidth.
that
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Miq Millman miq@teleport.com
Tualatin, OR
oletrucks is devoted to Chevy and GM trucks built between 1941 and 1959
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