Spring 2001 Volum e 10 No. 2

Editorial

This issue of the Amateur Computerist returns to

a general rather than thematic format. There are a

number of articles, however, that explore whether the

Internet will be for everybody or whether it will be

limited to an exclusive strata of society. Also the

question of what role the Internet will play in society

is a question that needs public discussion and exami-

nation. Such topics are being ignored by the media, at

least in the U.S., at the current time. Meanwhile there

are plans in the U.S. to change some of the nature of

the Internet and the means of its access. While the

Internet was originally created to make possible

resource sharing of human and computer resources,

there are commercial desires to make the Internet into

a network that will prioritize packets and introduce

classes of service so that the packets of those who pay

more will be treated in a privileged way and those who

cannot pay more will have their packets treated as

second class. The article in this issue about the can-

cellation of programming classes at the Ford Motor

Company that led to the creation of the Amateur

Computerist shows that a change in policy can be

carried out in a way that is hidden from the public and

contrary to their best interests. The effort of the staff

Table of Contents

Editorial.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1

Internet, Laboratory for Democracy?. . . . . . . Page 2

Ford Model E Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 10

Battle over Computer Classes.. . . . . . . . . . . Page 11

State of the Net in Hungary.. . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 15

A Loss for Netizens.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 17

Moment of Silence for Michael Muuss. . . . Page 18

Usenet Archives: Culture Clash. . . . . . . . . . Page 19

John Locke and the Internet. . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 25

MsgGroup Mailing List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 30

of the Amateur Computerist to continue to support the

development of computers and computer education,

despite losing the classes has been an important

achievement. Almost 15 years after the computer

programming classes were ended at the Ford Rouge

Plant, the Ford Model E program has been introduced

and is making it possible for many Ford employees to

have computers and a form of Internet access. What

will be the long term effect of this program will be

interesting to see.

The talk “Is the Internet a Laboratory for Democ-

racy?” presented at a European Union Conference in

December 1999, describes the important role that the

Internet can play in making it possible for citizens to

make some impact on the otherwise difficult problems

of their societies. Understanding the potential of the

Internet and the goals of its early socio-technical

pioneers can help to define a path for those concerned

with its continued development.

The article on the State of the Net in Hungary

provides a view of how Internet development is pro-

gressing in Hungary and the problems that the Hun-

garian people are encountering to be able to have

access to the Internet. This article helps to understand

the challenges to a society trying to develop the

Internet and trying to have it serve a general purpose

and socially beneficial goal.

In a similar way, the challenges of Usenet’s

development and the effect on Usenet of a company

archiving the posts contributed by users is explored in

“Culture Clash: The Google Purchase of the 1995-

2001 Usenet Archive and the Online Community.”

In this issue we express sadness with the loss to

the Internet and the world of two important Netizens,

Michael Muuss and Kerry Miller.

The article on John Locke and the Privatization of

the Internet considers the importance of thinking about

the way that the Internet was originally created and the

benefits that a social goal provided for all users. John

Locke's writing offers some helpful ways of under-

Page 1

standing how the benefits of such a shared devel-

opment are important to consider and nourish.

Serialization of the article describing the early

development of the MsgGroup mailing list ends in this

issue. Reviewing this early mailing list provides a way

to look back at some of the early vision of creating an

online collaborative process. This can help provide

useful perspective toward understanding the current

developments and plans for scaling the Internet. How

far have we come and where do we as a society want

to go with regard to the future of the Internet? There

is a vital need to be raising such questions publicly

and hearing from a variety of voices of users about

how they perceive the path forward. We hope that

volume 10 no. 2 of the Amateur Computerist will

contribute to catalyzing the much needed public

discussion on these issues.

Is the Internet a

Laboratory for Democracy?

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

[Editor’s Note: Following is an edited and expanded

version of an invited talk “Is the Internet a Laboratory

for Democracy: The Vision of the Netizens or the

E-commerce Agenda?” given at the European Union

NGO Citizen’s Agenda Conference in Tampere,

Finland, December 5, 1999. The URL for the confer-

ence was http://www.citizen2000.net/E2 ]

I am happy to be here today at this EU Confer-

ence on Citizens2000 exploring the nature of citizen-

ship at this special time in history when we are about

to welcome in not only a new century but also a new

millennium.

It is interesting that many of the questions being

asked at this conference are the questions that show

that we have both the old and the new surrounding us

and it is not always easy to understand the new as it

isn’t something that we are familiar with.

Yesterday during one of the opening sessions of

the conference, the question was raised by both some-

one in the audience and someone on the panel on

stage, about why the voting level of people voting in

elections in Europe is low. This is true in the U.S. as

well. The session yesterday raised the important need

to go beyond representative democracy in political

forms available to the citizen in modern times. And

the question was asked: “What would be the new ways

of participating?”

I am delighted to be here today at this conference

considering the role of citizens in the coming millen-

nium. This seminar “Civic Participation, Virtual

Democracy and the Net” is not only exploring the role

of citizenship but also a new form of citizenship, that

of the form of citizen which is one of the newly

emerging developments brought into the world by the

Internet. That of the Netizen.

The question I want to raise with my talk is “Is

the Internet a laboratory for democracy?” And I hope

that we can discuss this question more fully as part of

this seminar. Also I want to raise the question of what

this shows us about the nature of the Internet and

about the new forms of participatory democracy the

Internet makes possible.

When I first got access to Usenet, online news-

groups that are accessible via the Internet, my earliest

posts were greeted with comments from people around

the U.S. and from other countries like Scotland and

Canada and Australia. I was thrilled with the ability to

have a serious discussion on a variety of important

issues. This was the situation when I first got access to

an e-mail account and Usenet in January 1992 from

the Cleveland Freenet.

I had heard that Usenet was a collection of news-

groups filled with all sorts of interesting information,

but I didn’t know how to contribute to it. I wrote out

a description of what I was interested in discussing

and sent it to the only online newsgroup forum that I

could figure out how to access at the time, which was

called misc.books.technical.

First Post on Usenet

From: [email protected]

Newsgroup: misc.books.technical

Date: 10 Jan 92 07:48:58

I am interested in discussing the history of eco-

nomics – i.e. Mercantilists, physiocrats, Adam smith,

ricardo, marx, marshall, keynes, etc. With the world in

such a turmoil it would seem that the science of

economics needs to be invigorated. Is there anyplace

on Usenet News where this kind of discussion is

taking place?

Ronda

Page 2

The response to this and my other early posts

surprised me. I had posted to the Usenet newsgroup

misc.books.technical because this was the only news-

group I could get access to and I was new using

Usenet, using it from the Cleveland Freenet. Within a

day I had 10 e-mails from across the U.S. and a few

from abroad. Do you have any idea why? The news-

group misc.books.technical was for the discussion of

technical subjects and I was asking about how to

discuss economics. People from around the U.S. and

abroad wrote me to tell me that I had posted in the

wrong newsgroup. Several of those who wrote told me

the newsgroup where I should have posted in was

“sci.econ.” Others wrote, describing how Usenet

worked. Even more surprising was that one person

actually wrote, encouraging me to post in the appropri-

ate newsgroup and saying to me: “We’re all ears!”

I had interested people and they had acted both to

tell me what I had done wrong and also to tell me how

to be able to make my contribution so that it could be

utilized and considered by others.

This was an impressive experience for me. Ten

people had taken time out from their lives to help me

correct a problem, and to make it possible for me to

begin to contribute to Usenet and its growing world-

wide community of users.

A short time later I found another online forum, a

“mailing list.” Unlike the newsgroups that were forums

where I could go to participate, joining a mailing list

led me to get messages that came to my mailbox and

often would fill my mailbox. This was 1992. The U.S.

portion of the Internet, during this time period of

1992-1993 was basically government owned and

operated. The mailing list I had joined was called

“com-priv”. This mailing list was discussing plans for

privatizing the U.S. portion of the Internet and making

it commercial. On this mailing list I found U.S. gov-

ernment officials from different U.S. government

agencies, including the National Science Foundation

who were in charge of networking there. There were

officers from the newly created Internet Society, and

some of the people who had begun to operate or were

hoping to soon operate commercial access points who

called themselves Internet Service Providers (ISP).

When I posted on “com-priv” asking why the U.S.

portion of the Internet was being privatized, my posts

were either ignored or I would get an e-mail asking me

why someone who had just arrived into the discussion

would have such strong views on this topic.

Here my contributions were discouraged or ig-

nored. I wondered why I could find no discussion

about the planned privatization. What were the

reasons for it to happen? What were the reasons it

might be a problem? And why was no such discussion

allowed on the mailing list?

I posted on “com-priv” asking a question about

the development of the Internet. Also through e-mail

I got in contact with some of the pioneers of early

Usenet and the Internet.

I eventually left the “com-priv”mailing list, but

I had begun to realize that I wanted to understand the

origins of Usenet and the Internet, and to understand

how the interesting participatory environment I was

experiencing online on Usenet had developed. My

access to Usenet depended on the Internet and I

wondered why the U.S. portion of the Internet was

being privatized.

I soon learned that the pioneering vision of J. C.

R. Licklider had inspired many of the earliest net-

working developments. Licklider was a scientist, a

psychologist who had studied the brain to learn how

hearing was made possible. Also he had participated

in the discussion circles in the Cambridge, Massachu-

setts area where Norbert Wiener and others discussed

the nature and laws governing communication in

humans and machines. From this ferment the theory

of communication, control and feedback, of cybernet-

ics, was developed.

Wiener recognized the importance of determining

the nature of the relationship between the human and

the computer. Licklider decided to do a study to

understand what would be a desirable relationship. As

part of Licklider’s research study, he wrote down all

the tasks he did as part of his research. Reviewing the

notes he made, he discovered that a large percentage

of his time was spent doing routine tasks that the

computer could do, and only a small percentage of his

time was spent doing the kind of tasks like thinking

about the data he had gathered that the human was

uniquely qualified to do.

Licklider reasoned that what was needed in the

human-computer relationship was a partnership,

where each partner, the human partner and the com-

puter partner, would work together doing what they

each could do best. This would be the most produc-

tive arrangement. It would result in the most desirable

rapport.

Licklider called this relationship “human-com-

puter symbiosis” and he wrote about his experience in

a paper he published in 1960 called “Human-Com-

Page 3

puter Symbiosis.”

In the paper, Licklider described how there was a

need for human-computer interaction in order to

achieve the kind of rapport that he proposed was

desirable between the two partners in this new form of

symbiotic relationship. Also in the paper, Licklider

outlines the kind of research needed to create this

interactivity between the human and the computer.

This was a time when computers were big ma-

chines filling large data processing center rooms. A

person wanting to run a program would have to type it

on punch cards, and then bring the stack of cards to the

data processing center and leave them. The person

would come back hours or days later to pick up a

printout to see what the program had done and if it had

worked. Forgetting a period or a comma would often

mean the program had to be resubmitted. Getting the

program to run might take several days and numerous

trips to the data processing center.

The research program that Licklider outlined in

his paper was for a new form of computer architecture

that would make it possible for a person to interact

directly with the computer, to be able to type into the

computer oneself, instead of having to bring punch

cards to someone else to feed into the computer. Also

Licklider’s research program included creating interac-

tive graphics.

At the time that Licklider was doing his research,

there was a realization inside the U.S. Department of

Defense that these huge batch processing computers

were too hard to use for people to be able to utilize the

value of the computer. Licklider was invited to set up

a research office inside the civilian scientific research

agency called ARPA (Advanced Research Projects

Agency) that had been created under the U.S. Secre-

tary of Defense. Licklider started the Information

Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). Building on

early efforts to determine what methods were needed

to support fundamental research, Licklider decided to

support the creation of what he called “Centers of

Excellence” at chosen universities in the U.S.

Licklider supported the creation of Project MAC

at MIT and another research program at what is now

Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. These were

research programs to study the computer’s potential

and to explore the human computer relationship. A

particular interest of the research was how the com-

puter could be used for more than arithmetic calcula-

tions. In particular, Licklider was interested in how the

computer could be developed as a communication

device.

If you remember Licklider was a scientist inter-

ested in the nature and mechanisms of human com-

munication both in the research he had done about the

nature of the brain and how it made communication

possible and in the discussions he was part of in the

Wiener circles. As Licklider was helping to set up

research centers at universities he felt it would be

important to have a network of these different centers

to make it possible for the researchers at the different

programs to communicate with each other.

In this way they would be able to identify what

they had in common and what the general nature of

the study they were doing was. Licklider called this

network of leading researchers, “the intergalactic

network”. Since he was interested in facilitating

communication among the different research projects

and researchers, he knew that a goal of computer

research would be to create a computer network.

The earliest efforts at IPTO to create a computer

network didn’t succeed. Licklider left IPTO in 1964

after almost 2 years. But the vision he was developing

helped to inspire others who became the directors of

IPTO to continue to pursue this effort.

Research in interactive computing led to the

creation of different communities of researchers able

to share a computer and interact with it directly and

with each other. This new form of computing was

called time-sharing. As head of IPTO in 1966, another

psychologist, Robert Taylor also recognized the

importance of linking different time-sharing systems

at different universities. He brought Larry Roberts to

ARPA to head IPTO and to create a packet switching

network project which came to be called the

ARPAnet, i.e. a network connecting the different

ARPA centers of excellence.

Robert Kahn, who had worked on the design of

the ARPAnet and its development at BBN, came to

IPTO in November 1972. Kahn began the inter-

networking project, the effort to make it possible to

share computer resources among those who were on

different networks. These resources included people

collaborating and communicating, as well as sharing

programs and other computer resources. Kahn di-

rected the research from 1972 through the 1980s that

made the Internet possible. IPTO was ended in 1986.

By 1992 the Internet had developed and spread

around the U.S. and Usenet had spread through

several countries in Europe and was accessible via the

Internet or via uucp. A student at Columbia Univer-

Page 4

sity in NYC, Michael Hauben, had a project to do for

a class he was taking in computers and society. He had

only recently gotten access to the Internet as a Colum-

bia student. But he had experience as a teenager on

local bulletin board systems (BBS’s) in Michigan. He

had heard that the Internet was a much more extensive

communications system and was interested in knowing

how far it reached and what it made it possible for

people to do.

He wrote a set of questions and posted them on

Usenet and on relevant mailing lists. E-mail responses

immediately started arriving and in a few days he’d

received over 60 responses from people around the

world. He discovered that those around the world who

had gotten access to the Internet were excited about

what it made possible. And because they had found

that it was something of value, they wanted to contrib-

ute to it and to help others get access to it.

What Hauben found was that there was a new

form of citizenship emerging from the experience of

those who were participating online. One of the

conventions used to refer to the Net or to those related

to Usenet as net.xxxx with xxxx being the term you

were referring to. People occasionally talked about a

net.cop or a net.citizen. Michael contracted net.citizen

into netizen. The concept of netizen that he had discov-

ered was someone who saw himself as a citizen of the

net. This described the people online who were doing

what they could to contribute to the discussion or other

needs of the developing Internet and were active to

spread it to others.

Further research that Hauben and others did

revealed other examples of this new form of participa-

tory global citizenship that was emerging from the

development of the Internet.

There are many examples of this new form of

citizenship being developed and taking on some of the

important challenges of spreading the Internet to all.

Following are a few brief examples of the

achievements by netizens:

1) The NTIA online conference held by the U.S.

government in November 1994 on the question of

universal access to the Internet.

After there was protest against the privatization of

the U.S. backbone to the Internet, the U.S. Department

of Commerce decided to hold an online conference to

discuss the issue of universal access. A vibrant debate

over the privatization occurred in the online confer-

ence. Many people explained why the privatization

was a poor policy decision and that it would impede

the spread of Internet access, rather than facilitate it.

Others supported the privatization. But the dominant

sentiment was that the U.S. government shouldn’t

change its role in Internet development until it had a

plan for how to make access available to all. Though

the online conference didn’t stop the privatization, it

made a record that there was significant public

opposition to the privatization policy. And it demon-

strated that the form of an online conference was a

valuable means of exploring difficult but important

public policy issues.

2) The Intel Story

Another example of netizen activity was demon-

strated by the way online discussion on a Usenet

newsgroup was able to uncover a bug in the first Intel

Pentium computer chip. When newspapers reporters

tried to ignore the problem, online discussion by users

not only brought the problem to the attention of the

public, but they also challenged reporters who tried to

make excuses for the problem.

3) Communications Decency Act.

When the U.S. Congress passed the Communi-

cations Decency Act, vigorous discussion online on

Usenet, and on mailing lists condemned the law. And

numerous web sites were blackened in protest. Judges

hearing the court challenge to the law wrote a strong

decision criticizing efforts by the U.S. government for

trying to restrict the “global conversation” that the

Internet makes possible.

An important example of the power of the

netizens is the 1996 Federal District Court decision in

Pennsylvania overturning the Communications

Decency Act (CDA).

4) The U.S. government anti-trust decision about

Microsoft.

A more recent example of netizenship helping to

challenge unbridled power is demonstrated by the

recent finding by a U.S. court that Microsoft is guilty

of violating the U.S. anti-trust law. The online devel-

opment of an alternative and better operating system

by Linux programmers around the world, along with

the online discussion of the problems with Microsoft,

helped to provide an environment where the U.S.

government has been pressured to apply its anti-trust

laws to Microsoft’s activity.

Page 5

5) The ICANN challenge to the future of the Internet

A new and greater challenge has recently devel-

oped for netizens who care about the development of

the Internet and the fulfillment of the future promise

that there will be access for all to this new participa-

tory medium of global communication holds.

I learned about the problem of ICANN in the

spring of last 1998 from a Japanese mailing list that I

had been invited to participate in.

The U.S. government had posted a rule making

procedure on the web stating that they were going to

give key functions of the Internet to the private sector

removing them from public ownership and protection.

These functions included the IP number system

for providing a unique number to computers on the

Internet to make it possible for users to send and

receive messages across the diverse networks of the

Internet. It included the domain name system and root

server system. This system provides the network and

computer names that users use like xxxx@col-

umbia.edu or xxx[email protected].

A statement by the U.S. government called the

Green paper had been put online at a U.S. government

web site by the U.S. Department of Commerce. After

learning that there was only a day left to comment on

it, I was able to access it, copy it, read it and write a

response. The Green paper presented the Internet

solely as a means for e-commerce and provided no

means of supporting the global communication that is

the important general function of the Internet. I re-

sponded with a critique of the Green paper which I

sent to the comments section on the U.S. government

web site. I also posted it on relevant Usenet news-

groups and mailing lists on the Internet.

A number of people wrote me including someone

from the American Library Association, and from a

newspaper for local governments. They asked me if

they could reprint my response in their publications. I

later learned that the U.S. government did not want to

summarize the comments as required by a rule making

procedure and instead dropped the rule, but tried to

continue with the privatization.

Subsequently there was a meeting of the Internet

Society in Geneva, Switzerland. The U.S. advisor for

policy to the President, Ira Magaziner announced that

the U.S. government was planning to give the DNS

system to the private sector (whatever that meant).

When I tried to talk with Magaziner about why this

would be harmful for the public, he told me to send

him e-mail.

After I returned home, I sent several e-mail

messages to Magaziner and finally got an answer.

Also after several e-mails he agreed to talk with me

by phone. In response to my questions, Magaziner

told me that there were two problems he was solving

with his privatization plan.

1. The complaint by some trademark holders that

they weren’t being protected adequately from others

getting domain names that were similar to their trade

marks.

2. The desire of the International community to

participate in the administration of the Internet and its

essential functions.

When I told Magaziner my objections to the U.S.

government plan to privatize essential functions of the

Internet’s infrastructure, Magaziner told me I would

have to give him a proposal putting my objections

into operational form if I wanted him to consider

them. I felt that the second problem, the desire of

countries around the world to participate in Internet

development and administration, was the primary

problem to be taken up and that the trademark prob-

lem could only be solved after understanding the

other problem. I wrote a proposal to create a collabo-

rative scientific prototype to document the adminis-

trative functions to be taken on, and to create an open

online process to involve the online community in

developing this prototype. Also I proposed that a task

of this cooperative effort would be to identify the

problem to be solved, and the vested interests to be

identified who would make it hard to solve the prob-

lem, and to make a proposal toward determining a

solution.

I spent a week writing a proposal based on my

research on how Usenet spread abroad via a coopera-

tive process of development among members of the

European, Australian and Asian Unix communities.

The process that I was proposing, of a collaborative

international activity to identify the problem, was a

process I felt would provide a prototype to help to

solve the problem

Also Magaziner indicated a concern of industry

that different countries would pass different laws

related to the Internet.

Magaziner promised me a response to my pro-

posal, however, instead of his calling me to discuss it,

a few weeks later I heard from Becky Burr, in the

NTIA in the U.S. Department of Commerce. Mean-

while the U.S. government contractors who were then

administering the domain name and root server

Page 6

system functions, a company called Network Solutions

Inc. (NSI) and the Internet Assigned Names and

Numbers Authority (IANA) were negotiating under

U.S. government oversight to create a private entity to

provide for what was called “industry self governance”

of these controlling functions of the Internet.

NSI at this point in time was owned by SAIC, a

large privately held defense contractor corporation

formed originally by a number of people from the U.S.

Department of Defense. It held the NSF contract for

administering domain names. IANA was created by

the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the Univer-

sity of Southern California, who had a DARPA con-

tract to administer significant parts of the Internet’s

infrastructure. Both DARPA and the NSF are U.S.

government agencies. ISI had been created through

contracts with DARPA.

Supposedly negotiations between NSI and IANA

broke down and a proposal was presented by IANA to

form a private sector corporation to carry out the

privatization of these publicly owned and controlled

functions. IANA’s proposal was prepared by a suppos-

edly pro bono lawyer from one of the largest U.S.

corporate law firms. How a proposal prepared by a

U.S. government contractor was a private sector pro-

posal is still a mystery to understand. But perhaps the

fact that it is illegal according to U.S. law for the U.S.

government to create a private sector entity to conduct

government functions can help account for the Orwell-

ian nature of the terms used to describe a public entity

as the creator of a private sector proposal. (Also the

head of IANA during this period had been threatened

by Magaziner with prosecution in connection with a

dispute and activity that had developed over whether

NSI or IANA would control the DNS root server

system.)

The IANA proposal was to privatize essential

functions of the Internet’s infrastructure. These would

be put under the control of a board of directors. A

private sector non profit company was to be created

under California’s non profit corporate law. The comp-

any would be called the Internet Corporation for

Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The U.S.

government was to transfer to this corporation essen-

tial functions of the Internet, including the root server

system, the IP numbers, the domain name system and

the protocol development process (IETF).

Originally there were three proposals submitted to

the U.S. Department of Commerce, the proposal I had

been asked to submit to Magaziner, the IANA pro-

posal, and an alternative proposal for a private corpo-

ration that was submitted by several who had been

involved in the IFWP mailing list who called them-

selves the Boston Group. Later a 4th proposal was

also submitted.

The U.S. government allowed a very short period

of time for public comments on the proposals and

then declared the IANA proposal to create ICANN as

its choice proposal. All the government did to con-

sider the proposal I had submitted was to have a U.S.

Department of Commerce official call and talk to me

on the telephone for about 20 minutes. She asked if

there was something from my proposal that could go

into the IANA proposal to represent my concerns.

When I said that my proposal required government

support for scientists and collaborative scientific

activity, she didn’t explore why that was true, but

ended any contact. Afterwards she sent me an e-mail

message thanking me for my “constructive participa-

tion.”

During this period there was a hearing in the U.S.

Congress, held by the U.S. House of Representatives

subcommittee on Basic Science and the Subcommit-

tee on Technology about what was happening with

the DNS system privatization. Some of the people

opposing the ICANN proposal tried to contact Con-

gressmen on the subcommittee or their staffers. When

I asked the staffers if I could submit testimony in the

hearing, I was told that the committee would then

have to let everyone submit testimony. They asked

me to submit questions that the Congressmen could

ask of those they had invited to testify. I submitted

several questions including the question “by what

authority was the U.S. government transferring these

publicly owned and controlled essential functions of

the Internet to the so called ‘private sector’”? I

maintained contact with the staffers, often able to use

e-mail to do so, along with the telephone. Two days

before the hearing I was told that I could submit

testimony into the record. I sent testimony via e-mail

(which became part of the published record of the

hearing) and I also attended the hearing. Several

others who were on the IFWP mailing list also at-

tended the hearing and also submitted questions or

testimony that was later included in the published

record of the hearing.

6) Mailing list and ICANN

An important means for participation in these

issues has been online mailing lists and Usenet news-

Page 7

groups relevant to the topics There have been posts

and sometimes discussion on these online forms about

what has been happening with the plans of the U.S.

government to carry out this privatization of the

essential functions of the Internet’s infrastructure.

On the Netizens Association Mailing list there was

an ongoing long term discussion of the need to let the

public, both those online and off, know about what has

been happening in the Internet privatization process

the U.S. government is carrying out. For quite a while

the U.S. press articles on ICANN activity were only

press releases for the U.S. government plan. Finally,

after a large meeting in November 1998 in Cambridge,

MA, where there were many questions asked about the

privatization and much protest expressed about what

was happening, there were a few accounts reporting

that there was criticism of ICANN published in the

online and even in the print press.

After a number of posts on the Netizens mailing

list about problems with the creation and development

of ICANN and the way it treats users, there was a

serious discussion about the need to break through the

lack of media coverage of the problems with ICANN.

A Hungarian freelance writer John Horvath wrote a

long and detailed article about the problems of the

privatization and of the lack of information for the

public about what is being done. Horvath’s article was

printed in an online German journal Telepolis. In-

cluded in the article was a criticism of the way the

European Union officials involved were not protecting

the public which was similar to the criticism about

what U.S. government officials were doing. A Euro-

pean Union official wrote complaining about the

article and saying that the writer needed to do more

research on the European position about the privatiza-

tion. The fact that there was such dialogue, which even

got printed in the forum section of an online journal,

was important. Horvath’s article was referred to

broadly online. (It was reprinted in the Amateur

Computerist. See:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACN9-2.txt.)

Other mailing lists carried this discussion. One

such mailing list was the mailing list known as the

IFWP mailing list. This mailing list was mainly made

up of people who favored the privatization but had

disagreements about how it was being carried out.

However, there has been a long and sustained discus-

sion of some of the issues on this mailing list during

the course of the 1998-1999 period. The mailing list

has now been ended.

Another mailing list carrying some discussion of

the ICANN controversy was the Telecom Digest

which was a moderated mailing list and also a moder-

ated Usenet newsgroup. The moderator of this mail-

ing list, Pat Townsend, had directed the mailing list

for a number of years and it was highly regarded by

many online. Townsend expressed his concern about

what was happening and felt that those who are online

know what was going on and that they have a chance

to consider the effect that ICANN’s privatization may

have on their future net access. He posted some of the

articles sent to him by the critics of ICANN and

requested that ICANN advocates like Vint Cerf or

others respond. He also received some responses he

was told he couldn’t post. During this period, the

International Telecommunications Union (ITU) was

providing some minimal financial support for the

mailing list. An official of the ITU wrote to the list,

expressing his displeasure with the digest carrying

discussion critical of ICANN. The official indicated

that the problem was that the critics weren’t reliable

and that any time one does something there will be

criticism. He suggested that if the mailing list contin-

ued to carry such discussion, it would put in jeopardy

the funding that was received from the ITU.

In September, 1999, the organization Computer

Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) held

a conference and invited a few of those opposing

ICANN and ICANN advocates to be speakers at the

conference. The conference was sponsored by the

Open Society Foundation (Soros Foundation) and the

Marino Institute Foundation. CPSR also invited Ralph

Nader, who presented a proposal for a multilateral

agreement of different nations to support ICANN. A

response to Nader’s proposal was posted on mailing

lists critiquing it for not challenging the way that the

U.S. government had created ICANN to transfer

essential functions of the Internet’s infrastructure

from the public sector to the control of private entity

created illegitimately by the U.S. government. Also

the critique challenged Nader’s claim that online

users are to be regarded as consumers. Portraying

users and netizens as consumers limits their rights and

their ability to function as netizens, presenting them

instead as those who are involved in buying what

others sell.

There have been a number of other important

developments in the ICANN controversy. There have

been letters sent to executive branch officials by U.S.

Congressmen asking for explanations of behind the

Page 8

scenes government activity to create ICANN and to

form the Government Advisory Council (GAC), an

advisory body of government officials to ICANN.

Congress asked the U.S. General Accounting Office

(GAO) to investigate the secret process which resulted

in the choice of the interim board members for

ICANN. The GAO was asked for an opinion on the

authority of the U.S. government to create ICANN and

to transfer public property to ICANN, along with the

authority to fund U.S. representatives to attend the

GAC meetings. Other government agencies have

become involved in trying to challenge ICANN’s

closed and arbitrary structure. For example, advocates

from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA)

have complained to ICANN about the lack of proce-

dural rights for small business owners and others to

participate in ICANN’s activities. A few recent books

have been published which note the problem of privat-

izing the public Internet functions. (See, for example,

Rich Media, Poor Democracy by Robert McChesney,

University of Illinois Press, 1999, pg. 134)

What are the lessons one can draw from the

experience of the past year and a half participating in

the fight against the privatization of essential Internet

functions?

Is the Internet a Laboratory for

Democracy?

I have found that the Internet provides for impor-

tant ways for citizens to participate in and extend

democracy. Also, in the process of participating online,

I have learned something about the nature of democ-

racy.

I have been able to communicate with other

citizens in the U.S. and netizens around the world on

issues of public concern. I have learned how the

principles behind the creation of Usenet and of the

Internet are important democratic principles. Usenet

was created to make it possible for people to commu-

nicate. The Internet was created for a similar reason,

but phrased in a slightly different way, i.e. to remove

the constraints on communication. It was also created

to facilitate resource sharing across diverse networks.

I have gotten help and support from netizens

abroad to be able to be a citizen at home. I have gotten

help from other citizens in the U.S. to be able to

contribute to netizenship abroad. There are new

democratic forms and concepts being pioneered by

those concerned with the development of the Internet

and of Usenet that will help in the battles.

I have come to the conclusion that the Internet is

a laboratory for democracy. Those who are willing to

contribute in this exploration will contribute to the

further development and spread of the Internet and

will gain in their ability to be better netizens and more

effective citizens. But it isn’t easy and we need

improved ways to support each other and to work

together.

In summary I want to describe a recent interac-

tion that the Internet has made possible. In the process

of taking up the challenges of the ICANN controversy

I was invited onto a mailing list. For a while posts to

the mailing list were encouraged, but after challeng-

ing Nader’s plan to represent users as consumers,

moderators of the mailing list said they weren’t going

to post much on ICANN any longer. They continued

to post the articles they wrote, but they didn’t post

another post that I sent, even when it was not about

ICANN. Also I had a talk I had planned to give

cancelled. I wrote a post about how I had previously

had other talks I was scheduled to give cancelled, and

how articles I had been invited to write for publica-

tions, including a publication by the Internet Society,

were subsequently pulled from publication. The

moderators of the mailing list that wasn’t posting my

articles wouldn’t post this, but I posted it on another

mailing list that I still had access to.

Someone from Norway wrote me in response,

describing the frustration in his country with the U.S.

corporate effort to dominate around the world using

the Internet as the mechanism for e-commerce. Also

he described some of the activity of those in the Linux

movement in different countries to create an alterna-

tive to Microsoft’s operating system. He raised the

question whether something like that is needed for the

Internet as well. In the process of the discussion with

him I was reminded of Licklider’s vision for the

future of the network. In an article published in 1968,

written with Robert Taylor, Licklider and Taylor

wrote about the vision for the network that was only

just being planned. They wrote

For the society, the impact will be good or

bad depending mainly on the question: Will ‘to

be on line’ be a privilege or a right? If only a

favored segment of the population gets a chance

to enjoy the advantage of ‘intelligence amplifica-

tion,’ the network may exaggerate the discontinu-

ity in the spectrum of intellectual opportunity.

On the other hand, if the network idea

Page 9

should prove to do for education what a few have

envisioned in hope, if not in concrete detailed

plan, and if all minds should prove to be respon-

sive, surely the boon to humankind would be

beyond measure.

Unemployment would disappear from the

face of the earth forever, for consider the magni-

tude of the task of adapting the networks software

to all the new generations of computers coming

closer and closer upon the heels of their predeces-

sors until the entire population of the world is

caught up in an infinite crescendo of on-line

interactive debugging.

The Linux movement provides a material example

of those carrying on Licklider’s vision as they collabo-

rate and work together to debug the developing soft-

ware to make it possible for the Internet to spread and

develop.

But Usenet and Internet pioneers I have known

have taught me that there is another form of debugging

that is equally important.

That debugging is to identify

and solve the problems of the Internet’s continuing

development. Just as the Internet provides the means

to participate in the creation and development of

Linux, similarly it also provides the means to partici-

pate in the creation and development of the administra-

tion of its political and administrative infrastructure.

This is in some ways a harder challenge, but to fail to

do so is to leave the vested interests free to stifle and

then end the future development of the Internet as a

two-way interactive communications medium. They

want to replace it with a centrally controlled and

e-commerce directed commercenet.

Their slogan is

“making the world safe for e-commerce.”

Netizens

need a slogan as well, one which will indicate the need

for the continuing interactive participation of users in

the growth of the Internet and of the democratic

participation of citizens and netizens to solve the

problems of present and future Internet development.

Perhaps such a slogan is “the Internet is a laboratory

for democracy for ever more participatory debugging

to identify and solve the problems of future Internet

development.”

Notes

1. From In Memoriam: J. C. R. Licklider 1915-1990, Aug. 7,

1990, p. 40, reprinted by Digital Research Center; originally

published as “The Computer as a Communication Device,” in

Science and Technology, April, 1968. They also write:

“First, life will be happier for the on-line individual

because the people with whom one interacts most strongly

will be selected more by commonality of interests and

goals than by accidents of proximity. Second, communica-

tion will be more effective and productive, and therefore

more enjoyable. Third, much communication and interac-

tion will be with programs and programming models,

which will be...both challenging and rewarding. And,

fourth, there will be plenty of opportunity for everyone

(who can afford a console) to find his calling, for the whole

world of information, with all its fields and disciplines, will

be open to him, with programs ready to guide him or to

help him explore.”

2. Examples of such debugging of problems includes the role

played by Mark Crispin on the TCP digest in the 1982 period

before the cutover to TCP/IP on the ARPAnet. Crispin noted that

TCP/IP was a good protocol but that milestones for the cutover

had been planned even though the needed implementations for

the PDP-10 computers hadn’t been developed. Similarly, on

early Usenet a number of the Usenet pioneers encouraged open

discussion of problems and changes as they maintained that

Usenet was a users’ network and unless users participated in the

decisions they wouldn’t be decisions that were good decisions.

3. ICANN is an example of creating a centrally controlled

management form to centralize control over the Internet in a few

private hands. The U.S. government claimed that it would transit

the publicly owned central functions of the Internet's infrastruc-

ture to a privately owned and controlled ICANN by September

2000. They did not succeed in doing so and as of Spring 2001,

the U.S. government is still involved in the contracts with

ICANN determining the administration of these functions.

4. The General Accounting Office (GAO) report about ICANN

and the U.S. Department of Commerce, issued in July 2000,

noted that there was a problem with the U.S. government plan to

privatize the publicly owned functions of the Internet's infra-

structure. The report pointed out: “Under the Property Clause of

the Constitution disposal of government property requires

statutory authority. U.S. Constitution, Art IV, SS 3.” (pg 26). The

report noted that the Executive branch of the U.S. government

could not just transfer public property to a private company. That

there were laws and constitutional obligations regarding federal

property and its deposition.

Ford Model E Program

by William Rohler

[email protected]

On February 3, 2000, Ford Motor Company

Chairman Bill Ford, Chief Executive Officer and

President Jac Nasser, and UAW President Stephen

Yokich announced that Ford would offer all of its

eligible active employees a computer, printer and

Internet access for home use for a fee ($5.00 per

month in the U.S., for example) for three years. All

active, full-time hourly and salaried employees of

Page 10

Ford Motor Company worldwide – including Ford

Credit and Visteon – are eligible.

“Technology and the Internet, in particular, are

changing the way we do our business,” said Jac

Nasser. “Providing home computers for employees is

a tremendous step in the right direction of connecting

all of our employees with what’s going on with the

company – the way we run the business and the way

we communicate with our markets.”

“The intent of this program is to bring the

capability of our employees up to the highest level,”

said company Vice President and Chief Information

Officer Jim Yost. “In order to do that, they have to

have access to the Internet. Not only to learn more

about Ford, but about the customer and e-commerce in

general.”

The program was first called Ford Employee

Connectivity Program (FECP). But on July 28, 2000,

it was changed to the Model E program. “Model E is

the modern equivalent of Henry Ford’s $5 a day wage

– a breakthrough approach to empowering a work-

force,” said Jac Nasser during a speech on July 27 at

the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

The computer is a Hewlett-Packard with an Intel

Celeron 500 megahertz (MHz) processor, 64 mega-

bytes (MB) of RAM, 4.3 gigabyte (GB) hard disk

drive, a CD-ROM player, a 15 inch monitor, speakers,

a modem, software, a HP 640 Color Inkjet printer, and

Internet access from UUNET, an MCI WorldCom

company based in Fairfax, Va. PeoplePC is coord-

inating the overall program for Ford. The software

package will include word processing, spreadsheet and

antivirus programs, and other extras, including Encarta

encyclopedia and Quicken financial software.

The program is optional and the computer package

will become the property of the employee and will be

covered by a three-year parts and service warranty

through PeoplePC. Employees will not be restricted in

what Web sites they are able to access nor will they be

monitored by Ford or by PeoplePC. Employees will

access the Internet through a special portal that will

allow them to customize their options, preferences and

shortcuts. The portal will offer direct links to many

Ford services and information, and it will be

customized for different regions of the world. “When

employees choose to use the portal, they can get work-

related information,” explained Yost. “But we’re not

limiting it to that use. We want them to get on the Web

and use it like our customers would.” Every employee

will get two e-mail addresses and tools to construct his

or her own Web site. The program is not available for

retirees and part-time employees. There are upgrade

packages for people that want to pay extra for them.

Model E program Director Steve Paschen said

“Each country we go to has a different tax structure.

In some countries we go to, this is considered a

benefit, and certain countries tax benefits, and they

either tax the employee and/or they tax the employ-

ers.” That raises the cost of the program to potentially

prohibitive levels and has slowed the rollout. How-

ever progress is being made in several countries,

including France and Germany, which should soon

permit Ford employees there to begin logging on.

Paschen also said “In the U.S., people have just

gotten their computers within the last few months.

They’re just getting online; they’re just getting

comfortable with it. So I think we’ve got a huge

opportunity in front of us to start to really provide

them the tools and the information they’re looking

for.”

“Those are the kinds of things that I think we can

really have a lot of fun with and we can really make

a huge difference,” Paschen concluded.

The 1984-1987 Battle over

Computer Classes

This is an historical account of the fight that

developed over worker access to computer program-

ming classes at a large auto company in Michigan in

1983-1987. This story contains valuable lessons about

the problem U.S. workers face in trying to obtain

education in the workplace. These events occurred at

the Ford Motor Company’s Dearborn Engine Plant.

Schoolhouse in the Factory

The story starts with the massive layoffs in the

auto industry in the early 1970s. In response, workers

determined that they would fight for shorter hours of

work so that more workers could be employed. From

1973-1979 U.S. auto workers won shorter working

hours in their contracts in the form of individual days

off, called ‘paid personal days’. Together with the

reduction in hours of work, the auto companies

undertook major investment programs to update their

technologies. Describing this in a 1994 talk, one Ford

management spokesperson explained:

By the end of 1983 the North American auto

Page 11

industry had spent an estimated $80 billion on

retooling and renovating its manufacturing and

assembly plants (more money, by the way, than it

took to put a man on the moon).

The Dearborn Engine Plant has participated fully

in this industry-wide revolution. Over a two and

one-half year period, 1978-1981, we spent more

than $590 million to transform the plant from an

antiquated producer of V-8 engines into one of the

most modern four-cylinder engine manufacturers

in the world. And the improvements continue.

Last month we completed the conversion of our

plant from a producer of 1.6 liter to 1.9 liter en-

gines.... In 1980, we installed state-of-the-art

automation that was hard-line, or not easily

adapted for new applications. Since 1980, we have

increased dramatically our deployment of robots

and flexible automation units. By 1990, we expect

to have 70 such units....

Along with this new technology, the 1982 UAW-

Ford contract included a paid education benefit for

auto workers. Under what was called the Nickel Fund,

workers gave up a raise of five cents per hour to

contribute to an education fund.

Describing this fund, the same Ford official

explained:

At the Dearborn Engine Plant our education

facility includes the UAW-Ford Employee Devel-

opment Center, which teaches basic literacy skills

and high school equivalency courses and the

Learning Center, which provides basic and ad-

vanced technical training.

A basic reference document for this and subse-

quent contracts was a University of Michigan evalua-

tion report. The report described the creation and

development of the Employee Development Center at

the Dearborn Engine Plant, or what was called less

officially the Schoolhouse in the Factory. The study

explained that Ford workers desired “education” as

opposed to “training” and distinguished between the

two. Addressing workers’ views on education, the

report said:

An analysis of their remarks reveals that no matter

how stated, regardless of context, and despite

specific topic of conversation, these individuals

believe that education (as distinguished from

‘training’) can liberate them, can enrich their

lives, can be the vehicle which will allow them to

do and accomplish things they believe are impor-

tant to them. Education has an irresistible appeal.

While many of the participants spoke of the

‘utilitarian’ implications of education, what was

most evident was how deeply they felt about the

‘meaning’ of education. Education represents an

idea, a touchstone which literally has become a

matter of faith.

(...) In their remarks, these men displayed a very

sophisticated ability to distinguish between ‘educa-

tion’ and ‘schooling’...The single statement

which perhaps best conveys this message came

from a man who is rapidly approaching retire-

ment, ‘Overall, I just think it’s one of the best

things that’s happened to Ford’s and I’ve been

here 15 years....to have a set-up like this where

you can — right here on the job — you can do

anything.’

The report suggests that workers enrolled for

both practical reasons and broader purposes. It ex-

plains:

Participants describe their reasons for enrolling

in such terms as ‘I wish to improve my-

self’...‘I’m looking ahead’.. At the same time the

participants reported that education is essential

for gaining insight into their lives and providing

direction for the future. When discussing reasons

for participation, the participants invariably

indicated that the decision to enroll was a per-

sonal choice — an act taken independent of any

consideration related to company or union inter-

est in the EDC.’

The fifty percent drop-out rate that occurred at

the center was similar to what occurred in adult

education across the U.S., but the report states “No

one reported withdrawing because of unhappiness

with the program or staff or because educational

expectations were not being met.” Reasons given for

choosing the DEP program were “the ease and conve-

nience of continuing their education at an in-plant

educational facility. Participants reiterated the theme

constantly. Many participants acknowledged that they

could have gone to their local public school program

and received similar services but it was ‘too much

trouble.’ Being able to go to the Center before or after

work or during lunch “was a powerful inducement

leading to enrollment.”

The report also explained “a clear orientation to

learning is present among the participants. While this

is not to deny the validity of utilitarian outcomes,

most enrollees hold a broader view of the meaning of

their participation in the program.” Among the

Page 12

reasons for participating was helping children more

readily with their homework. Also, “participants sense

that enrollment in the program will help them become

more flexible regarding future employment and they

feel that education is necessary to help them keep up

with the changing technology of their jobs.” The report

continues, “Participants constantly expressed concerns

about the future, about the need to be prepared, to be

able to cope with an increasingly complex society and

a constantly changing work place. Education was

viewed as the basic means for preparing for the future

and for sustaining an orderly transition into the future.”

Referring to the computer classes offered at the

Schoolhouse in the Factory, the report explained that

“participants in the computer classes are primarily

skilled trades workers with at least a high school

diploma, and usually some advanced training.”

It said, “Participants in the computer classes,

while commenting favorably on the class, frequently

expressed the opinion that too many enrollees were

admitted for the number of computers available....”

Concerning the teaching staff, it found that “Partici-

pants believe that staff members view and treat them

as self-reliant, autonomous adults, – an attitude they

frequently contrasted with the way they were viewed

and treated in their roles as workers....”

Among the study’s conclusions were:

* The response to the computer courses was enor-

mous. It would make sense to have these courses

ready to go when a center opens to attract atten-

tion....

*More course offerings for workers with higher

educational skills. Many of the skilled-trades

people we interviewed expressed an interest in

further educational programs though the EDC for

the same reasons as production people enrolled

--proximity, convenient hours, pleasant surround-

ings etc....

Ford received this evaluation in June 1984. A new

contract incorporating these recommendations was

prepared to govern the period of September 1984 -

June 1985.

The school established under this contract em-

ployed a full-time program specialist and three certi-

fied teachers assigned to the basic skills program, each

working approximately 22 hours per week. Further, a

computer programming teacher offered two courses:

Computer Literacy I and II.

Although the course title emphasized ‘literacy’,

these courses were at reasonably difficult levels. For

example, after requiring familiarity with BASIC, the

course description for Computer Literacy II read:

“Topics covered will be...nested for/next loops, one

and two dimension arrays, writing programs, on error

statement, trace and no trace, bubble and binary sorts,

flow charting, math functions, string functions and

data types, sequential and random access files, hi

resolution graphics and shape tables, an introduction

to the Apple’s Monitor Mode.”

Facilities were small, with one computer room

equipped with several computers.

Rouge workers greeted the computer classes

enthusiastically. There was much interest in comput-

ers, and especially in programming. Popularity was

such that workers recommended classes to their

fellow workers and the program grew. Interest was

sufficient to open summer classes in 1985. Also,

workers requested that additional advanced classes be

offered, that there be a time when the computer

classroom was open outside of class time, and that

there be an instructor available in a lab setting so they

could come outside of class or if they had to miss a

class. Visitors from around the U.S. and the world

frequently visited the Schoolhouse in the Factory and

the computer classes.

Decline, Resistance, and Shutdown

In Fall 1985 the conditions at the Schoolhouse in

the Factory suddenly changed. At first, union and

company officials wanted to know what was being

taught in the computer classes. The Schoolhouse

director showed them syllabi and the class text.

Then the director told staff that they would not be

allowed to distribute a brochure she had prepared

announcing the computer classes, along with the other

course offerings, throughout the Rouge plants. This

brochure, called “It’s Your Nickel”, was only to be

distributed inside the Dearborn Engine Plant. She was

to create a different brochure to distribute Rouge-

wide that could not mention the days and hours when

computer classes were to be offered. Further, the

union newspaper would include the computer listings

at the Dearborn Engine Plant when its new issue came

out, at a date uncertain. But the union newspaper

appeared with only a vague notice of the computer

classes, and several classes were cancelled as a result.

From then on until classes ended in February 1987,

there was a battle to continue the computer classes.

On May 13, 1986, the following petition was sent

Page 13

to UAW Local 600 office:

Chairperson at the Dearborn Engine Plant:

May 13, 1986

We, the students of the computer training classes

at the Dearborn Engine Plant training facility,

have been informed there will be no summer

classes and possibly no fall classes.

There are at least 29 people interested in summer

computer classes. And as many interested in fall

classes.

We, the students of this computer class, would

like to know why it is so hard to continue educa-

tion in computers. We have been experiencing for

the past two or three semesters frustration in

continuing education and advancement in com-

puter training. When polled about advanced

classes, we desire them, but then they are not

offered.

We would like to know why they are not offered

because we want to continue and advance. (It was

also printed in the union paper which led us to

believe there were summer classes available to

computer students.) We await your answer so that

we may register for summer classes when they are

offered.

Concerned students of the computer classes,

(signed by over 20 students)

Also, computer students wrote, passed out, and posted

a leaflet at the Ford Rouge Plant. The leaflet said:

UAW members have been fighting for 1-1/2 years

against attempts to cut out the classes in computer

programming held at the DEP. UAW members

contribute 17 cents an hour straight time and 50

cents an hour overtime to have these classes

available. The most critical point for UAW mem-

bers is to have training in high technology. How

can UAW members be trained in high technology

by cutting computer classes out?

We contacted the Chairman in the Engine Plant,

and he didn’t give any result. We contacted the

management officials in charge of training in the

Engine Plant. We contacted the President of

Local 600, and the officials in charge of the

program at Ford Motor Co., and at the UAW. We

sent letters everywhere. We are tired of being

denied benefits we’re entitled to. We’re tired of

being shuffled from one person to another so as

to cover up who we’re fighting. We don’t know

what classes are being offered from one course to

the next. We ask for programming in BASIC and

they offer PASCAL. We ask for PASCAL to be

continued, they offer advanced BASIC. There are

no rights to grievance how the monies are being

spent. But the letter of Understanding (in the

1984 UAW-Ford Contract) says: ‘In view of the

Company’s interest in affording maximum

opportunity for employees to progress with

advancing technology, the Company shall make

available appropriate specialized training pro-

grams for employees.’ But this is not being

provided...

Despite the efforts of workers to make the prob-

lems known to Ford management and union officials,

and despite efforts to protest the ever-worsening

conditions via student and staff letters, those con-

tacted refused to investigate the problem. Instead,

students and staff faced retaliation threats and job

harassment. By February 1987, no further computer

classes were scheduled at the Schoolhouse in the

Factory and classes ended.

Realizing that computer classes would no longer

be available, several students and their teacher de-

cided to work on a newsletter, the genesis of the

Amateur Computerist. As our first issue in February

1988 explained:

This newsletter is to inform people of develop-

ments in an effort to advance computer educa-

tion. Workers at the Ford Rouge Plant in Dear-

born, MI were denied computer programming

classes. There was an effort by administrators of

the UAW-Ford program at the Dearborn Engine

Plant to kill interest in computers and computer

programming. We want to keep interest alive

because computers are the future. We want to

disperse information to users about computers.

Since the computer is still in the early stage of

development, the ideas and experiences of the

users need to be shared and built on if this tech-

nology is to advance. To this end, this newsletter

is dedicated to all people interested in learning

about computers.

Page 14

The State of the Net

in Hungary

by John Horvath

[email protected]

As the seconds tick the time out for the second

millennium, Hungary is still playing catch-up on the

long and winding infobahn. High telephone charges

coupled with metered rates for local calls make domes-

tic access still a luxury for many. In addition, the

country’s digital infrastructure is still inadequate to

handle large volumes of traffic and high bandwidth

applications.

Yet despite these and many other shortcomings,

Hungary has made some progress over the past few

years. The Internet has finally broken out from its

isolation as a seedy and potential dangerous place for

youngsters and society at large. Indeed, even the

extreme fringes of the political spectrum now have a

presence on the Internet.

The Internet as a source of mass media has gained

ground in the past year, albeit still very slowly. Con-

ventional media – radio, television, and print – have

increasingly made references to the “new” media. In

fact, many have their own online presence. Shows

dealing specifically with the Internet have also been on

the rise.

As for e-commerce, although still in its embryonic

stages, it has started to become more prominent. This

year saw a big boost for the commercial Internet as the

country’s largest savings bank, OTP, launched an array

of online services. This has taken place in conjunction

with the rise of other business activities, like ordering

a pizza online. As a result, advertising is beginning to

spill over from “cyberspace”. Many advertisements

placed within traditional venues now include a web

site or e-mail address.

Coupled with all these advances, there has been an

exponential rise in native language content. This is

directly related to the growth in user demographics

which, although still well below the European average,

not to mention North America and Japan, has risen

substantially. The latest demographic figures from IDC

show that there are 650,000 Internet users in Hungary

and this is expected to increase by almost 30 percent in

the next three years. Much of this can be attributed to

the government’s effort at wiring the schools to the

Internet. Known as Sulinet, the program has intro-

duced many students, teachers, and administrators to

the world of computers and networking, and has

offered them an opportunity to go online that they

otherwise would not have had.

There have also been several private sector

initiatives at broadening the user base. Cable access

has made its appearance, providing more reliable

service and higher bandwidth. Not only this, but with

cable threatening the ISP position of the country’s

leading telecom provider, MATAV, the access market

has become more competitive, to the benefit of

consumers.

In addition to this, the post office has been busy

establishing “telepost” offices in various communi-

ties. In conjunction with usual postal services, these

offices enable people to use computers and the

Internet, providing them with e-mail and a host of

other services. A total of 17 such offices are presently

scattered throughout the country, with plans to open

another 30 offices next year.

Although the progress the country has made over

the year to bring the Internet to the average citizen is

noteworthy, it is still far too early to proclaim that the

Internet revolution has “taken off” in Hungary. On the

contrary, the country still faces many challenges.

Unless these are addressed, the potential of the

Internet will be stagnant.

One of the major problems still faced, not only

by Hungary but other countries of Central and Eastern

Europe, is that the area is still being used a dumping

ground for redundant technology. The new computer

system at OTP, for example, which was purchased

and implemented in the mid-nineties, is outdated by

at least a decade.

This impediment of redundant technology, due

either to ignorance or economic considerations, is not

limited to merely Hungarian enterprises, however. A

Dutch bank operating in Hungary, which last year

implemented a new retail card system, only found out

at the beginning of this year that its new system was

not Y2K compliant.

On the commercial side of things, although the

presence of the Internet is obvious in advertising and

marketing strategies, Hungarian companies (espe-

cially SMEs) still are unable to see the advertising

potential nor fully grasp the dynamics of online

advertising. On the other hand, those that do are often

behind the times, perpetually caught in a cycle of

playing catch-up with western trends. For instance,

Page 15

although many companies have now begun to make a

shift toward the Internet, the new trend in the U.S. is to

actually “flee the dot-com”. As Keith Dawson writes

in his weekly log, Tasty Bits from the Technology

Front (see: http://tbtf.com/blog/1999-11-07.html as

well as http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/

SB942276734846706339.htm and http://www

.msnbc.com/news/333919.asp), “focus groups are

beginning to show that average folks don’t remember

the companies, don’t like the ads, and resent the ever-

present image of the greedy twenty-something zillion-

aire.”

Meanwhile, telework remains a remote and

wishful concept. Despite increased traffic congestion

and pollution in most of Hungary’s major cities,

especially Budapest, it’s not economically feasible to

have people work from home, given the poor state of

the telecommunications infrastructure -- not to men-

tion the cost. Moreover, most Hungarians still work

along lines of an industrial and agrarian economy, as

opposed to a knowledge-based one.

As for e-commerce, while making a grandiose

appearance, it’s caught in an awkward predicament. To

be sure, e-commerce in Hungary will grow but, if

present trends continue, its influence will be limited.

The main reason is that many are wary of initiating a

system for serious online transactions. Even non-

-monetary transactions, such as booking and reserva-

tion services, are not widely available. This is because

there lingers a fear and mistrust of online services. For

instance, while the ability to order and pay by credit

card over the telephone has relatively a long and

established tradition elsewhere -- notably the U.S. and

Canada – it’s still a concept very much alien to the

Hungarian economy.

A less than extensive user base is an additional

problem. Hungary remains one of the most expensive

places in Europe for Internet use. Although the in-

crease in the number of users may look impressive, it

still represents less than 7 percent of the population,

with only 14 percent of all PCs in Hungary connected

to the Internet.

While efforts have been made to get more people

online, access is still hindered by high telecommunica-

tion charges. This also goes for cable, which costs

about a quarter of an average Hungarian’s salary. A

study commissioned by the OECD confirmed that high

connection fees coupled with the high cost of local

telephone calls is impeding the uptake of the Internet

in Hungary. Unfortunately, this situation looks set to

worsen, with a 20-40% rise in telephone charges

expected in the new year.

Alternative efforts to entice more people online,

such as the post office’s telepost offices, are not only

expensive but also suffer from inconsistent and

lopsided development. In the Galga valley, for exam-

ple, a region about 40 km east of Budapest, a small

village has a telepost office while neighbouring towns

and villages, which are larger and more strategically

located, don’t.

As for the social aspect of computer networking,

here, too, formidable challenges and obstacles exist.

While the Sulinet program may have succeeded to a

certain extent in introducing many to the medium,

students and teachers are, nevertheless, not encour-

aged to understand the medium, but are taught to

simply use it. Similarly, for the community of users as

a whole, the concept of a “net community” is lacking

somewhat. Most know nothing about ICANN, no less

have an understanding nor even interest about any of

the issues surrounding the future of the Internet.

Another challenge faced by Hungarians embrac-

ing the Internet is the view of computer-mediated

communications as an alternative source for informa-

tion. Unfortunately, the Internet is still regarded as a

supplement to conventional media, a view that is

being reinforced by radio, television, and print.

Meanwhile, the old habit of regarding the

Internet as a cesspool of anarchy and perversity dies

hard. Earlier in the year, a report on hackers was aired

on Hungarian television. Instead of presenting a

comprehensive view into this sub-culture, with an

additional follow-up into Hungary’s unique hacker

culture, the report turned out to be nothing more than

a shoddy play on Eric Raymond’s dichotomy of

hackers and crackers (see “Homesteading the Noone-

sphere”), the simplified conclusion being that one

group (hackers) is benevolent (they are people who

try to find weaknesses in systems) while the other

(crackers) are nothing more than a malevolent bunch

of people.

To this extent, a 3-5 person special group within

the police will be established in the new year to deal

with “illegal” activities on the Internet. According to

media reports, the main purpose of this department is

to scan Hungarian sites for pedophilia and bomb-

-making information which, according to authorities

and the media, are the two most “dangerous” types of

content to be had. However, as with all such seem-

ingly noble efforts to protect the public from harm,

Page 16

the objectives are vague enough to be used as a means

for silencing social discontent and political dissent.

Despite these shortcomings, the future is not

entirely hopeless; nor will it be entirely mundane. One

thing to watch for is the possible rise of Linux in

Hungary. The government had already squandered a

chance when it had decided on Unix for the Sulinet

program. Not that it mattered much, for Hungary still

has a vibrant hacker underground. (Admittedly, the

efforts of the Business Software Alliance have not

gone unnoticed either, as many first time users and

administrators in public institutions take the threats of

the software police seriously.)

With the anticipated release of a Hungarian

version of Star Office some time at the beginning of

the new millennium, it remains to be seen how Linux

will affect the digital landscape in Hungary. As Linux

applications become more compatible with commer-

cial (i.e. Microsoft) products, cash-strapped institu-

tions and administrators may seize the opportunities

offered by free software.

On the other hand, Microsoft’s slick and subtle

media campaigns over the past year (Bill Gates is

regarded by many users in Hungary as one of the main

forces behind the Internet) has done much to cement

their level of support. At the same time, Linux’s

unfamiliar and relatively less user-friendly interface

are obstacles which still need to be overcome. Other

systems, meanwhile, such as BeOS or FreeBSD, are

not only insignificant in number but are also unavail-

able in the local language.

For Hungary, the irony of the whole situation is

that although the country boasts some of the best talent

in the field of computer programming and mathemat-

ics, it’s not reflected within the general population.

Instead of bringing Hungary up to speed on the

“infobahn”, this level of talent has either added to the

country’s brain drain syndrome or has taken part in the

construction of the multi-tier “information society”

which has emerged. Only time will tell if this is a

temporary enigma or will turn out to be a chronic

handicap.

A Loss for Netizens

[Editor’s note: The following e-mail message was

posted to the Netizens mailing list at the end of Jan

2000. Kerry Miller contributed often to discussions

and debates on the Internet and fought for the spread

of the Net and its value.]

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 22:42:43 -0500 (EST)

From: [email protected]

Subject: [netz] About a Loss for Netizens

On Friday night, January 28, 2000, the Netizens

mailing list administrator received a very sad mes-

sage. The message asked him to take Kerry Miller’s

e-mail address off the mailing list because Kerry had

died on January 18.

After asking another mailing list administrator if

he knew any further details, we were told that Kerry

had indeed died on January 18, of a heart attack after

shoveling snow. He was 75 years old.

Kerry Miller has been an important contributor to

the Netizens mailing list almost since it began. He

posted regularly and encouraged others to post by

commenting on their posts.

I remember Kerry’s first e-mail to me several

years ago. I told him about the Netizens mailing list.

He soon joined and participated actively and often.

One time Kerry signed off the mailing list. I

wrote him shortly afterwards asking how everything

was and telling him about some of the new Internet

problems that the Netizens mailing list was concerned

with at the time. Kerry resubscribed and contributed

again helping to make it possible to have a Netizen

challenge to that particular problem confronting the

Internet.

I didn’t know anything about Kerry’s life until

after hearing he died. I then learned from the modera-

tor of the other mailing list that though he had never

met Kerry, he had hoped to meet him several times.

That Kerry had moved from Kansas in the U.S. to

Canada to marry someone he had met on another

mailing list.

I will miss Kerry very much. The Netizens

mailing list is the poorer for this loss. I hope others

will share any thoughts they have about Kerry and

that we will all make an effort to contribute a bit extra

to make up for the fact that the Netizens mailing list

and the Internet have lost one of their important

contributors.

Ronda

Reprinted from Netizens Association Discussion List Digest

February 20, 2000, Volume 01 : Number 354

http://umcc.ais.org/~jrh/netizens/digest/Digest_1-354.txt

Page 17

A Moment of Silence for

Michael Muuss

[Editor’s note: The following appeared on the IFWP

and Netizens mailing lists.]

Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 16:54:56 -0500 (EST)

From: Joe Baptista <[email protected]>

Subject: [IFWP] a moment of silence for Mike Muuss

- confirmation?

a moment of silence as we honour a network great.

I-95 Accident claims life Churchville, Md - (AP)

A double accident Monday night on Interstate 95

in Harford County killed a Havre de Grace man. State

police say 42-year-old Michael Muuss died when his

car hit a vehicle left partially in the road after the first

crash. Muuss’ car then spun into the path of a trac-

tor-trailer, which pushed him into a vehicle stopped on

the right shoulder to help victims of the earlier crash.

The truck driver was taken to Harford Memorial

Hospital. The accidents occurred about 9:30 pm on the

northbound side of the highway in Churchville. The

first involved two cars and a tractor-trailer. A driver in

that crash was treated at Harford Memorial and re-

leased. Police say it’s not clear why either accident

occurred. No one has been charged, but the investiga-

tion is continuing. Traffic was able to get by for most

of the night, but it took until 2 am before all lanes were

opened.

> From: Sean Donelan <[email protected]>

> Subject: The author of PING is reported dead

> Since many network operators consider PING as

> one of their essential tools, I thought this would be

> of interest to the list.

> I haven’t been able to confirm this, but I haven’t

> been able to reach Mike.

> Forwarded message:

> >Subject: The Creator of Ping is dead...

> >

> >Mike Muuss, the author of the PING program used

>> on networks everywhere, died last night in a

traffic

>> accident on U.S. route 95 in Maryland. He was an

>> alumnus of Johns Hopkins (BS1978 or 1979 I

>> think).

> >

> >Funeral arrangements have not been made yet, but

>> I’ll probably be going back to Maryland almost

>> immediately to attend.

> http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html

-------------------------------

Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 15:20:45 -0500 (EST)

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: [netz] Fwd: A moment of silence for

Mike Muuss

It was with a real sense of loss that I read the

notice that Joe Pistritto posted on a mailing list last

Tuesday.

>Subject: Re: IP: With great sadness: Mike Muuss

>has passed on

>Cc: [email protected]

>From: “Joseph C. Pistritto” <[email protected]>

> wrote:

>Last night (Monday), Mike Muuss, famous for

> creating the PING program as well as BRL-CAD,

> died in a traffic accident at 11pm on U.S. highway

> near Aberdeen, Maryland. He was going home from

> work at the time. Mike worked his entire career at

>the Army Research Laboratories in Aberdeen

> Maryland, and was a specialist in first networking,

> then solid modeling. Many in the SIGGRAPH

>community will know of him because of the

> BRL-CAD package that he authored (with others

> later) and his animation work which was shown at

> several SIGGRAPH conferences.

I wanted to add:

It is indeed very sad to hear of this great loss to the

networking community.

There is another important contribution of Mike’s

to the development of the Internet. He created and

moderated the ARPAnet TCP/IP Digest which helped

in making the cutover from NCP to TCP/IP on the

ARPAnet in January 1983. The TCP/IP Digest

provided a forum in which to discuss the problems

that those who were to do the cutover identified so

Page 18

they could be solved.

The cutover set the basis for the creation of the

Internet as a meta-network of diverse networks.

After the cutover, the ARPAnet was split into

MILNET, an operational network for the DoD, and the

ARPAnet, a research network.

These two different networks were able to com-

municate using TCP/IP. And that is some of the basis

of the Internet as we know it today.

A while ago, I wrote a paper about the role the

TCP/IP Digest played in the cutover online. The URL

is http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/tcpdraft.txt In

the research I have done about the early ARPAnet

mailing lists, Mike’s role in contributing to the net-

working and UNIX communities stands out. His

efforts helped to connect these two pioneering commu-

nities. He will indeed be missed.

Ronda

[email protected]

Culture Clash:

The Google Purchase of the

1995-2001 Usenet Archive

And the Online Community

By Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

Google Takes Over Deja’s Name and

Usenet Archive

A Usenet user in Seattle, Washington was using

the Usenet archive at Deja.com on February 12, 2001.

He went out to get some coffee. When he returned,

h t t p : / / w w w . d e j a . c o m ha d ch a n g e d t o

http://groups.google.com. This is symbolic of how the

online community learned that Google, Inc. had

purchased the Usenet archive from Deja.*

A number of users expressed their dismay that the

purchase resulted in Google taking the Usenet archive

off line and substituting an archive of Usenet posts that

Google had been collecting since August 2000.

Google’s beta version of a user interface for the

archives was, many felt, quite inferior to what Deja

had online. One of the noted problems was that the

Google interface didn’t have a means to view the

discussions that a post was part of (known as discus-

sion threads). Instead the posts were presented indi-

vidually, in a manner similar to how one might

present the results of a web search. An article pub-

lished in The Register on Feb. 13, 2001 expresses the

frustration of users with the fact that Google had not

maintained access to Deja’s user interface and online

archive until they got their own software developed.

Subsequent articles in The Register on Feb. 14, 2001

and Feb. 15, 2001 included comments by Google’s

CEO Larry Page about why Google had not main-

tained the Deja archives online. He promised some

would be back online in a month and the rest in ninety

days.

Others in the Usenet community expressed their

relief hearing of the purchase of the 1995-2001

Usenet archive by Google. They felt Google had

developed a good web search engine. This apparently

gave them confidence that Google would be able to

create a good user interface for a Usenet archives as

well. They urged giving Google time to show what

they would do.

Research Origins of Google Web

Search Engine

A report at the National Science Foundation in

1999 explains that “the ‘Google’ search engine was

developed by Hector Garcia-Molina’s group at

Stanford as an outgrowth of the Digital Libraries

Initiative (DLI) project.” The development of the

Google search engine was carried out as part of a DLI

research project at Stanford University in California.

Several of those connected with this project are now

working at Google either as technical advisors or as

employees.

In a paper presented in 1998, Sergey Brin and

Lawrence Page, at the time Stanford graduate students

in the DLI project, describe the rationale for design

decisions for the Google web search engine. Their

paper The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual

Web Search Engine describes the recent commer-

cialization of the Internet and the harmful effect this

has had on the quality of web search engines (some of

which were originally developed with NSF funding).

“Up until now most search engine development,” they

write, “has gone on at companies with little publica-

tion of technical details. This causes search engine

technology to remain largely a black art and to be

advertising oriented....With Google, we have a strong

Page 19

goal to push more development and understanding into

the academic realm.” Later in the paper they describe

another objective of their research. They write:

Another goal we have is to set up a Spacelab-

like environment where researchers or even

students can propose and do interesting exper-

iments on our large-scale web data.

A design goal for Google was as a public research

web search engine to provide a laboratory to pursue

web search engine research. This 1998 paper also

discusses how the proprietary activities of commercial

enterprises do not facilitate the research and sharing

needed to develop web search engine technology. The

paper includes an acknowledgment of the funding of

the Stanford Integrated Digital Library Project by the

NSF, DARPA, NASA, and Interval Research, and the

industrial partners of the Stanford Digital Libraries

Project.

What has happened to the goals expressed in this

1998 paper describing the design rationale for Google?

Instead of a publicly developed search engine for

research into web search engine design, the authors of

the paper have formed a start up company. They are

now the President and the CEO of Google. Several of

those in the Stanford University digital libraries

research community are involved in the company.

Stanford University is among the investors providing

the funding for the company.

Describing such developments in testimony before

a House Appropriations Subcommittee, the director of

the NSF, Dr. Rita Colwell explains that the “transfer to

the private sector of ‘people’ – first supported by NSF

at universities – should be viewed as the ultimate

success of technology transfer.” She cites Google as

the company which “is an excellent example of knowl-

edge transfer from NSF investments in people.”

Formerly U.S. law required research done at govern-

ment expense remain in the public domain. Has this

requirement been changed? How is it that a publicly

funded research project is the basis for a private

corporate start up venture by the researchers, their

professors and their university? What is the effect on

the nature of basic research funding when the fruits of

its development are privatized by the researchers and

their university along with the corporate partners to the

venture?

How does this transfer of researchers and their

research from the academic sector to the private sector

affect the goal of Google research to provide an open

process to support research development of web search

engines? Examining what has happened in the acqui-

sition by Google of the Usenet archives and software

from Deja will perhaps provide some insight.

Responding to a question about why Google

bought a Usenet archive, Craig Silverstein, a former

Stanford graduate student and now director of tech-

nology at Google explained that the mission statement

of the company is “to organize the world’s infor-

mation, making it universally accessible and useful.”

He describes how Google planned for a number of

months to add Usenet data to its search engine data-

bases and over the past 6 months this goal became

more and more a topic of conversation at Google.

According to Silverstein, Google started a con-

versation with Deja about the archives. However,

after Deja sold off part of its company, the oppor-

tunity became available for Google to acquire the

Usenet archive data rather than license it. No one at

Google has revealed what Google paid Deja for the

Usenet archive. Considering the goal of encouraging

the sharing of research about web development that

marked Google’s early development, the process of

internally deciding to purchase a Usenet archive

rather than any obvious discussion with the online

community suggests that the company’s foray into the

private sector has involved them in a similar black art

that they observed as a problem of previous search

engine development.

Online Petition to Deja about the

Usenet Archives

Silverstein raised the question of why there was

only one such Usenet archive. Also he said he wasn’t

aware of the online petition signed by more than 3850

users to urge Deja to maintain the Usenet archives or

to transfer it to a reliable organization, preferably a

public or nonprofit organization, if Deja could no

longer maintain it. Many of those who signed the

petition included comments with their names. This

public online petition contrasts with the internal

discussion and negotiations that Google carried out to

acquire the archive from Deja. That those involved in

the acquisition at Google did not have an idea of the

concerns of the online community suggests there is a

communication problem between Google and the

online Usenet community.

Whether there are other archives of Usenet posts

during the 1995-2001 period is not at the moment

known. Steve Bacher is one of those who signed the

Page 20

petition to Deja. Comments from users like Steve

Bacher are included in the petition. These provide an

understanding of why more people didn’t archive

Usenet during this period. Bacher describes how he

used to maintain an archive of Usenet at his site but

that he came to rely on the Deja archive and discontin-

ued his own, telling those who had used his archive to

use Deja.

Another comment in the petition, by Ofer Even-

Tour notes that Alta Vista had an archive that was dis-

continued. Ofer writes: “I wish Alta Vista would bring

their Usenet Archive back.”

Recognizing the problem of relying on one entity

to archive Usenet, Paul Shaffer writes: “Who was

sleeping when DejaNews became the choke point of

Usenet history???”

Reading the comments in the petition helps to

provide an understanding of the importance of access

to users of an archive of Usenet posts. Also several of

those commenting propose the conditions they feel

will be necessary to continue such access.

Among those signing the petition is Theodor

Holm Nelson, author of the book Computer Lib. He

writes: “This archive is a public resource which has

slipped into private hands. It must be kept available for

the public benefit.”

In a similar tone, Kay Marquardt explains that

“the content of the Usenet archive is public content.”

Such concerns lead Lee Randolph to write: “where

is the Andrew Carnegie who will endow ‘free public

search engines’ for the new century?”

Considering the problem of how to maintain such

an archive responsibly, Calfin Ostrum writes, “If it had

been known that you would remove forever access to

the Usenet archives, some other more public-minded

organization would have come into being to preserve

them. Like it or not, you have implicitly assumed a

responsibility to provide these archives and you are

going back on it. If you don’t want to continue to

provide them, you should ‘fess up’ to it and then

arrange to transfer them (for free) to whatever organi-

zation offers to take them. The Usenet archives are a

major repository of a non-trivial part of contemporary

culture.”

Others point out that since an archive provides a

public benefit it needs government support and fund-

ing. Ray Normandeau writes, “Maybe Government

grants should be requested for upkeep.” Echoing this

sentiment, Brian McNeil explains that the “USENET

archive... should *never* have been in private /corpo-

rate hands... give it to an appropriate educational

establishment.”

David McRitchie writes that if Deja could no

longer continue the archive, it should be turned over

to the U.S. Library of Congress as a working system.

Robert L. Collins explains, “The Usenet power

search power tool is invaluable to me. I use it more

than any other link. If you can’t find a way to make it

financially viable, then perhaps you should spin it off

as a non-profit and seek grants. It is a public good...

government funding is appropriate.”

Describing the value of the archive Kalle Valo

comments: “Deja’s news archive is essential part of

Internet. Whenever there is a problem, news archive

almost always has a solution. And even in many

languages.”

Considering the future online community,

prompts Lee Coursey to write, “Future generations of

Netizens will need this.”

Since feeds of Usenet posts are sent to news

servers at participating sites with new posts being

added by users at the sites and older posts expired by

sites, a Usenet archive can be compared to an ongoing

accumulated global conversation. To determine how

to archive such conversation is a research problem

that some in the Usenet community feel requires a

community approach. A post on the website

slashdot.org generated a heated discussion about

whether it was desirable to have the code for the user

interface to the Usenet archive as open source. Also

there was discussion about whether Google should

make copies of the archive available to those who

desired a copy. The slashdot.org discussion was a

response to an article that appeared on the Wired

website on Wednesday, February 21 proposing that

Google provide a copy of the archives data to be

maintained as a distributed system on the computers

of a number of different universities. The article also

proposed that Google open source its user interface so

those in the online community could explore how to

improve it. This proposal echoed a proposal made in

The Register on February 13, 2001. Andrew Orlowski

wrote:

But perhaps something as valuable as Usenet –

the words of ordinary Internet users – is never

going to be safe in private hands. Why not return

it to its roots? The Library of Congress could

administer the archive, and ensure it was a prop-

erly distributed system farmed out to the best

Universities, who could produce ever more

Page 21

cunning hackish search tools? That’s not as much

fun as shooting lasers at rockets, of course, but a

lot cheaper.

Users on Mailing Lists and Newsgroups

Discuss the Problem

There has also been discussion of what would be

an appropriate way to maintain the Usenet archives on

several mailing lists. One such discussion took place

on the Community Memory mailing list. Some on that

list volunteered to try to find an appropriate academic

or non-profit institution to maintain the archives. One

such possibility proposed was the Metalab ibiblio.org

project at the University of North Carolina in Chapel

Hill which was formerly known by the name sunsite.

Sunsite was the name of the site, they explain, because

they were originally funded by Sun Microsystems and

still are along with other corporate partners. But they

wanted a vendor neutral name to reflect the general

nature of the information they archive. Another possi-

ble site proposed was the Computer Museum in

California. A subscriber to the mailing list reported

that he tried to contact Deja to inquire about the

possibility of a copy of the archive going to the Com-

puter Museum, but his inquiries did not get any re-

sponse.

The newsgroup alt.fan.dejanews provides a forum

on Usenet for discussion of what is happening with the

Usenet archive. Several users discussed the difference

in culture between a corporation which has an obliga-

tion to view a Usenet archive as a way to earn revenue

and the needs of Internet users for whom Usenet and

the Internet are an important means of communication

unrivaled elsewhere in the world.

In a post, William S. Kossack describes his

experience participating on Usenet and the impli-

cations of this experience toward understanding the

nature of Usenet and the Internet. He writes:

If all we did was read archives then the

internet would die tomorrow. The internet is about

communication. It’s about the guy in the outback

that knows something about the software your

using that nobody else does. It’s about the guy

with a different native language that needs help on

a research problem. It’s about the guy down the

street that needs help finding someone to really fix

his car. It’s about people and communication

between people that don’t know each other and

will probably never meet each other.

I’ve worked on problems where the best

expert or at least the one willing to help lived in

the outback. I’ve solved research problems where

everyone working with me either lived in a non-

English speaking country or at least in Chicago.

I’ve gotten answers to car problems, camera

problems, computer problems, health problems,

and even met my wife via the net. The internet is

not about archives it’s about communication. It’s

about communication on a scale not possible by

any other means.

Kossack’s post poignantly characterizes the

nature of the discussion and human-to-human

computer-facilitated interactions which are possible

because of Usenet and the Internet.

Will this Culture Clash Affect Usenet?

What will be the effect of putting a Usenet

archive again under the constraints of the income

producing requirements of a corporation?

Will this affect the precious human-to-human

communication that Usenet and the Internet make

possible?

If Google is willing to provide copies of the

archive to university sites or other non commercial

institutions, would this be helpful in making it possi-

ble to establish a form of user interface and archive

access that support the continued growth and spread

of such human communication?

While there has been broad ranging discussion in

the online community about what should happen if

Deja could not maintain a Usenet archive and much

sentiment toward having the archive provided with a

home with an academic or noncommercial institution,

a decision to buy the Usenet archive was made

internally at Google without any input that is obvious

from the Usenet community. The lack of communica-

tion between the online community and Google on the

considerations that are important to take into account

in determining the future for a Usenet archive is an

example of the culture clash that Google’s purchase

of this Usenet archive suggests.

Another aspect of this culture clash between the

online community and Google relates to any claim of

Google to own the content of a Usenet archive. The

postings on Usenet are different from much of the

content of the web. While Google is indexing and

providing means of searching the web, it does not

claim to own the web pages or information it is

indexing. With regard to a Usenet archive, however,

Page 22

the offer to license or purchase Usenet posts for a fee

or to claim rights to ownership of the posts, is contrary

to the understanding of users and their intention with

regard to their Usenet posts. In general, those who post

on Usenet consider their posts to be contributed to

facilitate communication in the online community.

Any company’s claim that it has a right to buy or sell

a compilation of Usenet posts presents a serious

challenge to this understanding which has made it

possible for Usenet to function over the years.

In his article Net Cultural Assumptions, first

posted on Usenet in 1992, Gregory Woodbury stresses

that people who post on Usenet are doing so recogn-

izing that “folks on different machines *desire* to

share information in an easy and timely manner,

despite the spatial separation between them and the

machines they are using. That is the persons using the

Net to communicate *want to communicate* and are

willing to cooperate in effecting that communication.”

That is the unwritten agreement. How Woodbury

would feel about a company putting a copyright on

those communications and calling them their property

to be bought and sold, is not the subject of his article.

But what effect will it have on Usenet when posts the

online community has contributed for the purpose of

communication are claimed as the property of com-

mercial entities? As Woodbury argues, those posting

on Usenet in general consider that their posts are

contributed to facilitate communication among Usenet

users. Any company declaring that it has the right to

the ownership of these posts, or to buy or sell a compi-

lation of such posts, presents a serious problem for

Usenet users and for Usenet’s continued development.

Their actions can have a chilling effect on those who

make the contributions.

In general, posts are covered by the Berne conven-

tion, agreed to by many countries, and which the U.S.

joined on March 1, 1989, protecting the right of the

creators of the posts to their copyright. The Berne

convention provides that once a work or idea is fixed

in a tangible form, the creator holds the copyright to

the form. No © or other notice is required for the

when they are contributing to communicate. Neverthe-

less, this copyright is a protection against any other

entity gathering their posts and claiming ownership or

the right to financially benefit from the copyrighted

work of others, without the explicit permission of the

contributors. Whether Google paid money for the

Usenet archives is not known, since they have not

made the details of the transfer from Deja to them

public. However, a spokesperson for Google has said

that the company will consider the request to make a

copy of the archive available to a nonprofit or public

entity and that proposals can be sent to

[email protected]

Tom Truscott, one of the co-originators of

Usenet, provides a bit of a different perspective to

understand the challenge the transfer of the Usenet

archive presents to the community. He points out that

those at Deja who developed the archives and the

code for the user interface spent a long time thinking

and working on them, and for most it must have been

a labor of love. He suggests that creating a new user

interface or search software for the archives will

require that technical decisions be made which will

require an understanding of Usenet and its nature.

For example, he writes:

1) citing a Usenet article – When I reference a

Usenet article, I use the magic URL that Deja

supplies for it. I have found them to be valid

indefinitely. At least, until about a week ago.

Will Google continue to supply permanent

URLs? I sure hope so.

2) Ranking Usenet articles – I haven’t tried the

new Google/deja search yet, but I’ve heard it

doesn’t track “threads” any more. Technically,

this is quite important, as Steve Bellovin pointed

out in http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/

16888.html A thread represents an interactive

discussion, and so presenting the thread together

and in order is good. But there is another way

that Usenet searches can exploit threads. Usenet

articles are more transitory than web pages. But

“followups” to articles which create Subject

threads, permit a limited variant of PageRank

[Google’s ranking scheme for web pages-ed]

Describing the differences between web tech-

nology and Usenet technology that are relevant

toward how one will do a search, he writes:

3) Searching Usenet articles – When doing a text

search, google considers matches in the web page

<title> to be more important than elsewhere, and

text in a large font is more important than text in

a smaller font. A Usenet article does not have a

<title>, but it does have a Subject: field. Usenet

articles often contain “included text” which

should be considered less important than original

text.

He summarizes, “So, there are significant differ-

Page 23

ences in the ways that pages/articles should be cited,

ranked, and searched,” and he asks,”Does Google plan

any improvements, for Usenet articles, in any of these

areas?”

Truscott’s comments are helpful in conveying

how the level of understanding of Usenet will impact

the design decisions that Google or anyone else who

designs software for a Usenet archive makes.

There is another question, however, raised by the

transfer to Google of the Usenet archive. This is the

question of how important is it to maintain and de-

velop the collaborative online community? How

important is it to encourage cooperative contributions

to a common pool of technical knowledge, software

code, tools and other social forms that the new online

community has developed?

J. C. R. Licklider is recognized as the visionary

who inspired the development of a the worldwide

network of networks. In articles he wrote in the 1960s

and after he explains why it is crucial to foster a

collaborative online environment and contributions by

users to a common pool of technical knowledge. The

research on time-sharing that Licklider supported when

he first went to ARPA in 1962 set the foundation for

such a cooperative community. The early collaboration

between the different Centers of Excellence that

Licklider set up at universities in the U.S. were the

basis for the research to create the ARPAnet. The

creation of the ARPAnet continued the development of

this cooperative community. The ARPAnet mailing

lists begun in the 1970s supported the cooperative

communication that continued to develop. Usenet grew

up in the early 1980s by building on the experience

gained by those who had participated in the ARPAnet

mailing lists and by linking up with the ARPAnet

mailing list community. Together Usenet and

ARPAnet technical pioneers formed a vibrant online

cooperative community and created a common pool of

technical knowledge. They have given the world

contributions as varied as the Requests for Comment

(RFC’s) and Unix tools. Even more important perhaps

has been the ability of the online community to work

together to solve the difficult problems of scaling

computer technology and computer networking.

Usenet and the Internet are crucial supports in making

it possible for researchers to collaborate to understand

and then solve the problems these developments

present. The problem that the online community is

faced with is how to continue its collaborative commu-

nication and contributions? Do they need some broader

support from academic institutions and governments

toward this end? Isn’t it a loss if research objectives

are ended and the resources used to develop commer-

cial enterprises as happened with the 1998 design

objectives for the Google web search engine? Isn’t

there a need to find a way to support and encourage

the integrity of the research community so that they

can resist efforts to turn them and their endeavors into

products for investor speculation? Those who are

technical employees of private corporations will

especially need a vibrant online collaborative commu-

nity to help them overcome the difficulties that

functioning in a proprietary environment brings.

Vibrant and functioning Usenet newsgroups and

Internet mailing lists can help with these challenges.

But what will it mean to the online community if

these essential communication processes are curtailed

or declared the private property of someone? This is

one of the challenges now facing the online commu-

nity.

This is one of the questions raised by the sale by

Deja of the contributed posts of the Usenet com-

munity, and one of the questions raised by Google’s

buying these posts and suggesting that they have a

property right to own them and to trade them.

How this dilemma will be resolved will be

determined by how seriously the online community

treats it. The petition to Deja and the various dis-

cussions both on Usenet and on mailing lists suggest

that there are those in the Usenet community who

recognize the importance of the situation.

--------

This article originally appeared in Telepolis:

http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/7013/1.ht-

It is reprinted with permission.

*The company DejaNews had collected the posts on

Usenet from 1995 and had a search engine to search

for them at their web site. Several months ago

DejaNews changed its name to Deja.com and lim-

ited access to the Usenet archives it had collected to

posts from the last year.

Page 24

John Locke and the

Privatization of the Internet

By Jay Hauben

[email protected]

For historical reasons, the U.S. government has

overseen the technical development of the Internet

from its beginning in the early 1980s. At least since

1997, there has been an effort by the executive branch

of the U.S. federal government to privatize the essen-

tial, central functions of the Internet.

I want to investi-

gate the Internet and its proposed privatization. I will

be guided by the analysis of John Locke (1632-1704).

Locke analyzes the questions of property and privat-

ization in Chapter 5, “Of Property” of his The Second

Treatise of Government (c.1680-1683).

Locke considers the original state of human

society before the creation of political institutions. He

assumes that the earth and its resources were available

“to mankind in common”. He wants to show “how

men might come to have a property in several parts of

that which God gave to mankind in common.”(sec 25)

This raises for me the question, what is the original

state of the Internet and what might privatization mean

and do to the Internet. By privatization of the Internet

I mean the ending of the governmental fostering and

oversight that have been in place from the beginning of

the Internet

and replacing them by control of the

crucial functions by non governmental, private entities.

The Internet is still young, less than 30 years old.

There are disputes over what the Internet actually is

and over its history and potential impact. It is consid-

ered by some to be wires and routers and perhaps

protocols and the domain name system. For others it is

the interconnection of all computers using a particular

set of communication agreements called the Transmis-

sion Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol suite

(TCP/IP).

It is important for my investigation that I state my

understanding of what the Internet is. The Internet

from its beginning and still today is an interconnection

of diverse, independent, packet switching networks. A

computer network is an interconnection of computers.

The Internet is a meta network, something in addition

or “above” its component networks. There is a signifi-

cant difference between interconnecting computers, no

matter how different they are and interconnecting

networks. Computers may differ in operating systems,

character sets, hardware, etc. These are all technical

aspects. The networks that interconnect to make up

the Internet each have their own purposes, system

administrations and architectural principles. They

have been set up by different political and economic

administrations to serve different functions. The

Internet was designed to solve the problem of sharing

resources and communicating among such diverse

networks while respecting their differences. Funda-

mental to the Internet is its principle of open architec-

ture which requires respect for the autonomy, purpose

and local sovereignty of the networks that become

part of the Internet.

The technology of the Internet is based on the

successful development of computer time-sharing and

packet switching technologies. The impetus behind

the development of time-sharing and then packet

switching was for greater accessibility of computing.

There was a fear among some scientists and engineers

that the power of computer-aided decision making

would otherwise be concentrated in too few hands.

There was also the expectation that a great benefit

would arise when computer resources and user

created content would be sharable by a large com-

munity of users.

The guidance and investment that made the

original networking and internetworking research

possible and lead to time-sharing, packet switching,

protocol development, the original hardware and

software, leasing of long telephone lines, was all pub-

lic. It was leadership from scientists under govern-

ment contract and public money mostly U.S. but also

British, French, Norwegian and NATO public money,

some supplied via military budgets.

The original vision guiding these developments

was to unite communities of human beings via com-

puter communications into an Intergalactic Network

as J.C.R. Licklider called it, a vast human-computer

symbiosis.

The developments that have made the

Internet possible were achieved by an international

collaboration among scientists fostered by a public

administration of research projects encouraging

openness and resource sharing. Just as Locke sees the

original state of people as sharing the resources of the

earth in common, I take this public funding, original

social purpose, and cooperative origins to have

created an electronic, public commons.

For Locke, things in common are only valuable

if they can be used for “the support and comfort” of

people. And all such things should be available for the

needs of all people. But does not the use of some of

Page 25

those things to satisfy the needs of one individual

require the making of common things into private

things (i.e., privatization)? Locke resolves this appar-

ent difficulty by arguing that in the original conditions

of human society the things of the earth were plentiful

so that “he that leaves as much as another can make

use of, does as good as take nothing.”(Sec 33) Personal

use of things in this stage still leaves the whole as a

commons. “Nobody could think himself injured by the

drinking of another man, though he took a good

draught, who had a whole river of the same water left

him to quench his thirst.”(sec 32) Such use leaves the

commons intact. Use of the Internet does not require a

taking from it either. There is no less of the Internet

after I use it than before. That is because digital

resources are not diminished when they are copied.

And the technology of the Internet is such that no

simple use of the Internet adds any but an insignificant

cost to anyone. Each network provides its resources for

its own users but at the same time those resources

become available to the whole Internet at no necessary

new cost.

There are enough resources on the Internet and

many people who use it, far from taking, are actually

contributing something by their use like posting an

opinion or answering a question. For the moment the

only result of many other people using it at the same

time as you, is that you may experience a slightly

longer delay than if the others were not using it. But

such delay is a result of the early stage of technologi-

cal development. There is every reason to believe that

significantly greater capacity and interconnection are

technically possible. So just use or increasing the

universality of access to the Internet does not diminish

its common or public nature or utility to those already

using it.

Also, the Internet has the character of a common

good. For Locke, in the original state of human society

the resources of the earth that are needed for food,

clothing or shelter are common goods. Already to

some extent but potentially to a much greater degree,

the well being of each person will also depend upon

the quality of his or her access to the Internet. What

Licklider and Robert Taylor wrote in 1968 is closer to

reality now:

... Life will be happier for the on-line individual

because the people with whom one interacts most

strongly will be selected more by commonality of

interests and goals than by accidents of proximity.

...For the society, the impact will be good or bad

depending mainly on the question: Will ‘to be on

line’ be a privilege or a right? If only a favored

segment of the population gets a chance to enjoy

the advantage of ‘intelligence amplification,’ the

network may exaggerate the discontinuity in the

spectrum of intellectual opportunity.

Licklider and Taylor are arguing that to be online

will be essential to a full life. If something like the

Internet is crucial to human “support or comfort” it is

a common good and in the view of Locke all people

have a common right to be included in its use.

As long as people gather from the commons what

they need for their own use, Locke says they have a

right to what they gather. “Whatever is beyond this,

is more than his share, and belongs to others.”(sec 30)

He argues that small populations and gathering for

use gave rise to “little room for quarrels or conten-

tions about property so established.”(sec 31) Locke

considers property not in the modern sense of private

property and ownership but in the sense of having the

right of use. Even improvement of a part of the

commons through the application of the labor of an

industrious person leaves enough for others. There-

fore, as long as his product is for the use of his family

and not allowed to spoil, the industrious person has a

right to his cultivated area.

Likewise, the component networks of the Internet

can be developed and improved as much as their local

owners and administrators want based on whatever

principles they choose without encroaching on the

commons of the Internet. What constitutes the com-

mons of the Internet does not get used up or dimin-

ished by such improvement but in most cases gets

augmented by it. The original goal of packet switch-

ing networks was resource sharing. The Internet

carries resource sharing beyond the individual net-

work to the whole community of Internet users. The

increase in resources on any one network is an in-

crease in general of the resources for all users.

The Internet has been designed and developed

based on the principle of open architecture. That

means the Internet makes the most minimal require-

ments possible on the networks that it interconnects.

What is required, i.e., what is in common, is the

agreed upon protocols (the TCP/IP protocol suite) that

allow for the sharing of resources without intruding

on the local sovereignty of the component networks.

The Internet protocol (IP) creates a pool of unique

numerical addresses, currently 4.3 billion. Each

network administration which adopts the TCP/IP

Page 26

protocol suite and arranges for Internet connectivity

needs to receive a range of these unique addresses for

use by computers within its network. As long as a

mechanism is in place that insures equitable distribu-

tion of these numerical addresses the Internet can

continue to function and grow.

The TCP/IP protocol suite and these IP numerical

addresses are the main technical aspects of the Internet

commons. But what makes the Internet attractive and

crucial in the lives of people are the other people. The

Internet makes more people than ever before in es-

sence shared resources for each other. And these

people make available or point to still other resources

available via the Internet or off line. This commun-

ication and the transfer of files and information never

leaves anything less for other users.

The protocols and numbers and what they require

are what the Information Processing Techniques Office

(IPTO 1962-1986) of the U.S. Advanced Research

Projects Agency (ARPA) originally fostered and

funded. These protocols and numbers along with all

the people and other shared resources are the commons

of the Internet. There are also parameters known as

port numbers that are common to users of the Internet.

And there is at present a domain name system that is a

common way to map names to the numerical IP

addresses. From the beginning, the U.S. government

has overseen the distribution of the pool of IP numbers

and the protocol development process. These along

with the oversight of the Domain Name System (DNS)

and its central root server system are precisely what

the executive branch of the U.S. government is trying

to privatize by creating the Internet Corporation for

Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN, currently a so

called non-profit, private corporation registered in the

U.S. state of California).

Locke has taken us as far as to see that, in his

analysis, all people at the origins of human society had

a right not to be excluded from the things of life. The

use by one person of the things in common did not

exclude another’s use of as many things as he or she

needed. The right of use was not a right of abuse or

alienation. When one’s labor improved something, that

for Locke gave the laborer the right to a property in

what was improved, as long as there remained in the

commons other resources for other people’s use. That

is, the person who added his labor to something had a

right to exclude others from taking or using it. For

Locke the question of privatization is the question of

the right to exclude. But privatization is not unlimited.

It is only permissible if there remains enough of the

things of life that no one is without what is needed.

At a first glance it is not clear that the privatiza-

tion of the Internet’s essential or common functions is

also a question of exclusion and loss to some people.

But putting these functions in private hands means

that the oversight and administration of the IP number

distribution and protocol development process can no

longer be at public expense. So who will pay for these

and the other added costs that come with the payment

of, e.g., a private board of directors? The costs in

private situations always get passed onto the end

users. Thus use of the privatized Internet will inevita-

bly have a higher economic barrier to scale than if the

commons of the Internet remained publicly overseen

and administered. Also, by its very nature, private

control of the development of the Internet will be

focused on different objectives than has been the

public direction. That can be seen already where the

private sector sees e-commerce as more attractive as

a goal than universal access to a global commun-

ication system. Both higher cost and different purpose

will tend to exclude many people from Internet usage

or so change the content that the universal value of

the Internet will be lost.

Locke argues that, “there is land enough in the

world to suffice double the inhabitants, had not the

invention of money, and the tacit agreement of men to

put a value on it, introduced (by consent) larger

possessions and a right to them.”(sec 36) After the

introduction of money there was eventually no longer

the same plenty for all, and then exclusion led to

quarrels and contentions. The gathering into cities and

the introduction of money made efforts to exclude

more attractive to some and required a response by

society. That response was the introduction of politi-

cal institutions or civil society in replacement of the

natural state of society. “The several communities

settled the bounds of their distinct territories, and, by

laws, within themselves, regulated the properties of

the private men of their society, and so, by compact

and agreement, settled the property which labour and

industry began.”(sec 45) What is the fate of the

commons in political society? Locke points out that

“in England or any other country, where there are

plenty of people under government who have money

and commerce, no one can enclose or appropriate any

part [of the commons] without the consent of all his

fellow-commoners; because this is left common by

compact- i.e., by the law of the land, which is not to

Page 27

be violated.” The consent of all the commoners is

necessary because “after such enclosure, [what is left]

would not be as good to the rest of the commoners as

the whole was, when they could all make use of the

whole.”(sec 35) And political society and laws are

necessary so as to enforce the receipt of that consent

before, not after, the proposed enclosure that will deny

many some previous benefit.

Of course the Internet has developed in an era

long after political society has taken deep roots but

also especially at a time when money and commercial

considerations play a dominant role. That is why the

need for a public role in the Internet is so great. As

with the English Commons, if the general public

interest is not protected, the particular private interests

will significantly diminish what is available to the rest

of society. The tension between common purpose and

private exclusion exists and will cause contentions and

quarrels which require procedures in accordance with

law for their resolution.

By Locke’s reasoning, for the common aspects of

the Internet to be privatized the consent of all the

Internet commoners is necessary. But who are the

Internet commoners? It would seem that the Internet

users should be considered the Internet commoners.

The development and expansion of the Internet to all

parts of the world originally had been for public use

and not for private profit. The Internet is composed of

diverse, independent and sovereign networks each

embedded in a political society determined by geo-

graphic location. The question of whose consent is

needed to make decisions like whether or not to

privatize the essential functions of the Internet needs

to be studied, debated and acknowledged as important.

But at a minimum, the system administrators, political

representatives and the users themselves seem to

require central roles in such decisions. And the Internet

itself seems to be giving rise to a new political and

social phenomenon, the netizens, those Internet users

who take a responsibility to spread and safeguard the

development of the Internet.

Enclosure of the commons according to Locke

begins the process that leads to the need to establish

national borders. How does this apply to the proposed

privatization of the Internet? Locke reminds U.S. that

questions that effect people across national borders are

solved by “leagues that have been made between

several states and kingdoms, either expressly or tacitly

disowning all claim and right to the land in the other’s

possession, ... and so have, by positive agreement,

settled a property amongst themselves, in distinct

parts of the world.”(sec 45). The Internet is a com-

mons that reaches across national boundaries. Its

spread too was facilitated by agreements but these

took the form of Acceptable Use Policies (AUP). For

example, the U.S. National Science Foundation

prohibited commercial use of the NSFNET and only

allowed interconnection with other networks that had

a similar policy. It seems likely, following the analy-

sis of Locke, that the continuation of the growth

(scaling) of the Internet will require agreements or

treaties among leagues of the nations involved. Such

agreements are the opposite of privatization. They are

in a sense a public internationalization in recognition

of the global reach and importance of the Internet.

When Locke analyzes why privatization is a

problem for society, he envisions an isolated island

where there is nothing “fit to supply the place of

money...” He asks “what reason could anyone [there]

have to enlarge his possessions beyond the use of his

family ...?”(sec 48). Unless there were hopes of

commerce with other parts of the world to draw

money to the enclosure by the sale of products, it

would not be worth the enclosing.

The Internet is a wonderful global electronic

commons. For its own sake it does not appear that

anyone or any organization would want it as a private

possession. So the questions need to be raised: To

whom or to what will the benefit of privatizing the

Internet accrue? And what role are such forces play-

ing in bringing about for example the creation of the

Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers

(ICANN)? This private corporation, under a board

chosen in secret, has been working since November,

1998 to take over the functions of the Internet still

under the oversight and management of the U.S.

government or its contractors. In over two years of

ICANN activity the secret of how this board was

chosen, by whom and for what purpose is still impen-

etrable. Secrecy is a clue that these are important

questions. The other clue is that the supporters of

privatization have never been willing to discuss or

debate the question of why or how privatization might

serve the general welfare. They say commercializa-

tion will spread the Internet but they are not willing to

allow debate over this question in the media they

control.

Guided by Locke’s theory of property, my

conclusion about the privatization of the essential

functions of the Internet now being attempted is that

Page 28

the commons of the Internet should be protected not

privatized. Locke suggests that this protection is the

responsibility and obligations of governments in

league with each other. He writes, “For in government

the laws regulate the right of property, and the protec-

tion of the land is determined by positive constitu-

tion.”(sec 50) The history so far of the Internet sug-

gests that acceptable use policies and voluntary gather-

ings of network administrators with online forums

might also play a crucial role. However at present it is

especially the U.S. government that has the obligation

and responsibility to protect the Internet commons

since the central functions of the Internet are for

historical reasons under its supervision.

The U.S. Constitution has in the Preamble six

purposes for which the U.S. government is established:

1) to form a more perfect union, 2) to establish justice,

3) to insure domestic tranquility, 4) to provide for the

common defense, 5) to promote the general welfare,

and 6) to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves

and our posterity. The development of the Internet falls

under at least 1 and 5. The privatization does not seem

to fit any of these six purposes allowed to the U.S.

government by its own constitution. The fundamental

purpose of the U.S. government would appear to be to

promote the general welfare. Locke agrees that all that

governments do must be “only for the public

good.”(sec 3) My analysis indicates that the privatiza-

tion of a commons is in general not for the public

good. So that the efforts of the U.S. government

executive branch to privatize the essential functions of

the Internet are inappropriate. The U.S. General

Accounting Office has also warned that if privatizing

the crucial functions of the Internet involved the

transfer of any public property it would be contrary to

the U.S. Constitution. For Locke, the legislative is the

supreme power (sec 132) not the executive. In the U.S.

there is a law, the Government Corporation Control

Act of 1945, which prohibits the transfer of govern-

ment functions to corporate entities like ICANN

without specific authorizing legislation. Presently there

is no such legislation and there have been questions

from the U.S. Congress concerning the privatization

and the lack of appropriate authorization to do it.

Locke points out that should ICANN get “into the

exercise of any part of the power, by other ways, than

what the laws of the community have prescribed, [it

would have] ... no right to be obeyed”(sec 198). That

is because it would not then be the body the laws have

appointed, and consequently not the body the people

have consented to. In such a case, even if some

network administrations obey ICANN, there will be

others for local reasons that will not. Then fragmenta-

tion of the Internet is a likely result.

Private property in the analysis of Locke is not a

natural right but a conventional right based on civil

law. A commons necessary for the well being of a

people needs to be protected from becoming private

property. Locke has an answer if the U.S. Congress

and executive branch and the other governments of

the world allow the privatization of the Internet

commons. “Whenever the legislators endeavor to take

away, and destroy the property of the people, ... they

put themselves into a state of war with the people,

who are thereupon absolved from any further obedi-

ence.” (sec 222) So at least in Locke’s analysis, the

result of privatizing the Internet on which people’s

lives are coming more and more to depend will be a

greater instability in society. We may not have come

that far yet but my reading of Locke puts the privat-

ization of the Internet commons in line with the other

violations of the public purpose of government that

more and more characterize our time today at the

beginning of the 21

Century.

Notes

1. See for example, “Management Of Internet Names and

Addresses,” (63 Fed. Reg. 3, 741-42, 1998), the White Paper

issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, June 5, 1998. To

achieve its privatization the U.S. Executive Branch set up in Fall,

1998 a private corporation, the Internet Corporation for Assigned

Names and Numbers (ICANN). But as of 2001 the central

functions of the Internet are still under the oversight of the U.S.

Department of Commerce. ICANN is acting in a way as IANA

before it as a government contractor.

2. My quotes from Locke are from the Everyman edition of Two

Treatises of Government, edited by Mark Goldie reprinted in

1998. I indicate after each quote the section in “The Second

Treatise of Government: An Essay Concerning the True Origin,

Extent, and End of Civil Government” from which it is taken.

My analysis has benefitted from a reading of A Discourse On

Property: John Locke and His Adversaries by James Tully,

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980. I take from this

reading the understanding that Locke used the unqualified word

‘property’ to mean the right to use of, not ownership in the

modern sense of property. Then the things of the commons can

be the property of someone in the sense that he or she has the

right to use them to the exclusion of other people’s use as long

as there are still in the commons resources to meet the needs of

the other people.

Page 29

3. The role of the U.S. government in the chain of events that lead

to the Internet started with J. C. R. Licklider’s vision and his

creation of the IPTO in 1962. Some of Licklider’s vision can be

understood from the papers noted below in notes 5 and 7. See also

Ronda Hauben’s work on IPTO, the Advanced Research Project

Agency office created by Licklider (work in progress).

4. For the documentation of these concerns among the scientific

and engineering community see Computers and the World of the

Future, edited by Martin Greenberger, MIT Press, Cambridge

Ma., 1962. This book of lectures and discussions from MIT’s

Centennial Celebration in 1961 contains the keynote address by

C.P. Snow and contributions from many of those who went on to

play significant roles in the development of time-sharing, packet

switching and networking. For an analysis of the impetus for these

developments see Chapter 6, “Cybernetics, Time-sharing,

Human-Computer Symbiosis and Online Communities: Creating

a Supercommunity of Online Communities,” in Netizens: On the

History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet by Michael Hauben

and Ronda Hauben, Los Alamitos, Ca. IEEE Computer Society

Press, May 1997. Also this theme was explored in “The Internet:

History, Technical, Principles, Social Impact”, an Horizons

mini-course, Columbia University, Spring 1999 and Spring 2000.

5. See, “Man-Computer Symbiosis”, in IRE Transactions on

Human Factors in Electronics HFE-1, March, 1960, pages 4 to

11. Also reprinted in In Memoriam: J. C. R. Licklider 1915-1990,

Aug. 7, 1990, p. 40, Digital Research Center.

6. See Michael Hauben, “Preface”, in Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet by Michael Hauben and

Ronda Hauben, Los Alamitos, Ca. IEEE Computer Society Press,

May 1997 .

7. In Memoriam: J. C. R. Licklider 1915-1990, Aug. 7, 1990, p.

40, reprinted by Digital Research Center; originally published as

“The Computer as a Communication Device,” in Science and

Technology, April, 1968.

MsgGroup Part V

Questioning What Should Be

Discussed

[Editor’s Note: The following is the last installment of

this article. The whole article can be accessed at:

http://www.ais/org/~ronda/new.papers/msghist.txt]

Not surprisingly there were managers at Xerox

who were not happy about the kind of frank discussion

ongoing on the ARPAnet mailing lists. A post by

David Liddle, Vice President of the Office Products

Division at Xerox explained his reluctance to have

Xerox products discussed by Xerox employees on the

ARPAnet (63):

Many of you in Xerox are aware of a newly

created ARPAnet distribution list named Apollo.

It was established to promote discussion of

personal workstation computers. As you might

expect, much of the recent discussion has in-

volved the Xerox 8010 Star information system.

Because many of the messages ask for informa-

tion about this product and its associated devel-

opment software, you may feel tempted to reply

to some of them.

It is ARPA policy that the ARPAnet be used

only for government supported research and

development. It is against Xerox policy to use the

ARPAnet to discuss products.... Xerox employ-

ees use the ARPAnet for ARPA related research

purposes only, not for answering questions or

distributing information about our products.

Questions from potential customers about

the Xerox 8010 and other OPD products should

be referred to Arnold Palmer, Field Sales Man-

ager, Xerox Corporation, 1341 West Mocking-

bird Lane, Dallas, Texas 75247, phone (214)

689-6689.

David E. Liddle

Vice President

Office Products Division

A response to Liddle’s post challenged the

reasons he had given for limiting discussion. Lars

Ericson at CMU wrote(64):

The use of the ARPAnet for informal discus-

sion of computer science-related issues is a

primary win. It is clear that such discussion is

beneficial to ongoing government research

projects – DARCOM and Office Automation for

example, are well represented on the Work

Station.

Ericson continued:

Mr Liddle also seems to forget that the

reason PARC efforts are so immensely saleable

these days is precisely BECAUSE of their partic-

ipation and openness (as opposed to IBM, say) in

the ARPA/university research community, and

not in spite of it.

“Mr. Liddle’s Xerox policy announcement,”

Ericson wrote, “represents the sort of irrelevant (to

ARPAnet interests) administrative miserlyness that

we may come to expect from Xerox now that the

13-piece suits have brought PARC to market.”

Page 30

Also responding Little’s post, Joe Newcomer

emphasized ARPA’s policy forbidding commercial use

of the ARPAnet(65).

Joining the controversy, Crocker explained (66):

It is my understanding that the purpose of this

discussion is to consider the technical aspects of

personal work-stations. Arpa and the rest of the

military are investing quite a bit of money in this

area, so that this discussion would seem to be

extremely appropriate to the ARPAnet mission.

He added:

I do not believe that conformance with the

ARPAnet proscriptions necessarily requires

commercial participants to be prohibited from

voicing opinions about the technology in general

or from answering specific questions about their

product. Touting their product is another matter.

Crocker’s proposal was that, “I suggest that each

company assign one technical (not marketing) person

to respond to queries. This will permit direct informa-

tion, while making ‘tone-control’ easier.”

Part VI

Limited Distribution?

Not only was there reluctance on the part of

representatives of some commercial entities to have

open conversation of all issues on ARPAnet mailing

lists ported to Usenet, but also there was a sense

among ARPAnet participants that their contributions

should be considered privileged private publications

and their distribution strictly limited. A conversation

describing this issue developed on FA.digest-p carried

on the ARPAnet and on Usenet. In January 1982 a post

noted that Computer World magazine had gotten

copies of the TCP digest from someone and published

verbatim quotes from the digest(67). Though the

source of the leak acknowledged what had been done

and agreed to stop, “it gave everybody a real scare,”

the post noted. “My temporary solution to this issue,”

the poster proposed, “is to add the following notice to

the Masthead:

“TCP/IP Digest Thursday, 8 Oct 1981 Volume 1: Issue 1

------------------------------------------------------

LIMITED DISTRIBUTION

For Research Use Only --- Not for Public Distribution

------------------------------------------------------

At least this ensures that anybody who gets

fed a copy knows that it is not supposed to be

shouted to the treetops. Comments?”

Christopher C Stacy at MIT disagreed with such

a publication identifier. He wrote (68):

I think that the explicit banner on the mast-

head of the Digest is a bad idea, because this will

cause many people to think that if such a banner

is NOT present (i.e.., on any other Digests or on

future TCP Digests) that it is alright to redistrib-

ute the material.

In another post, Stacy described his understand-

ing of why ARPAnet mailing lists had to have limited

distribution. (69) He pointed to an incident that had

occurred when MIT had to fight for its continued

existence on the ARPAnet after an article in the

journal Datamation about the WINE-TASTERS

mailing list appeared. He also cautioned of the possi-

ble liability problems when evaluating and discussing

various commercial products, as with the

INFO-TERMS mailing list which evaluated terminals.

“But laying down the law,” he wrote, “is a fairly

useless way of solving this sort of problem. The

problem is one of awareness, cooperation and trust.

Only if people understand and care, will they take

steps to protect a fragile institution like the

ARPAnet,” he wrote.

Another post noted that the mailing list digests

“do not exist as authorized publications.” (70) He felt

that they should be considered “internal communica-

tions between research project members authorized to

use the net.”

A post asking about the implications of the

Daniel Ellsberg case to this issue by Mike Muuss was

answered by Paul Karger. Karger wrote (71):

While putting a restricted distribution state-

ment on a digest may be a psychological limita-

tion on distribution, there are a couple of prob-

lems. First, since ARPA and DCA are part of the

DoD, there are specific regulations on what may

or may not be marked as FOR OFFICIAL USE

ONLY. The regulations are in part designed to

not let people invent other kinds of markings.

This dates back to the Ellsberg case and the

desire to limit the ability of government people to

conceal information from the “public” (whoever

that is).

Though Karger said his familiarity with the

regulations was a little stale, “I would be very careful

about developing new ways to restrict distribution of

government information,” he cautioned.

Page 31

Through this discussion, concerns for limiting the

ARPAnet discussions were raised, and answered with

the limitations that the current state of relevant law

allowed U.S. government officials to impose on the

ARPAnet mailing list discussions.

Thus the way was cleared for broader distribution

of the posts on ARPAnet mailing lists, making the

transition from the limited circulation available on the

ARPAnet to the broader participation Usenet made

possible.

Part VII

Usenet Welcomes All

While access to the ARPAnet was limited, Usenet

welcomed all who were willing to connect in a public

way (72). “Usenet is a public network,” wrote Mark

Horton, “and those on it should announce themselves.”

“It seems to be a common thing,” he wrote, “for a

new site to come upon Usenet without telling anyone

they exist.” What happens,” he explained, “is that

someone hears about Usenet from someone already on

the net, who sends them their copy of whatever code

they are running.” He asked, “When you start getting

network news, you should announce your existence to

the net by filling out the enclosed form and posting it

to the newsgroup net.general.... This form will be used

as your entry in the Usenet directory. Note,” he contin-

ued, that is the policy of Usenet that all sites receiving

public newsgroups (such as net.all and fa.all) are

public in the sense that the fact they are on Usenet is

public. The name and phone number of a contact

person, as well as the name and location of the site, is

important. If you are doing some kind of secret work

there is certainly no need to divulge the nature of your

work. If you feel that you must keep your existence a

secret, you should not be joining Usenet,” Horton

clarified.

A form was provided for a new site to fill in.

Horton asked that those joining Usenet post their

announcement and basic configuration information in

NET.general. NET.general was the one newsgroup that

all were on Usenet during this period were encouraged

to read (73). “net general,” wrote Horton, “is for stuff

that everybody is supposed to at least consider reading.

“It’s useful for INITIAL QUERIES and ANNOUNCE-

MENTS.” However, he noted that “It is NOT there for

discussions.” He explained, “If you see something in

net.general you want to comment on, you should

almost always just REPLY to the author, not follow

up to the world. If a continuing discussion is needed,

start a new newsgroup.” He also suggested replying to

initial queries from NET.general in NET.misc.

“NET.misc,” he wrote, “is a good way to keep

net.general free of trivia without starting new

newsgroups for short lived topics.” He urged those on

Usenet to realize that not all might be interested in a

particular topic but “feel obligated to read things in

net.general because of their possible importance.”

Matt Glickman, who with Mark Horton wrote the

code for B News, supported Horton’s request for

maintaining NET.general as a newsgroup that would

concern all. He wrote (74):

Just reminding everybody (It feel it is my

duty...) that net.general is no run-of-the-mill

newsgroup. No sir. It’s not net.misc and it’s not

net.news. net.general should only contain GEN-

ERAL interest information of interest to the

ENTIRE network. Especially, no dreaded news-

group discussions whatsoever! Please behave

yourselves.

Therefore, while the posts on NET.general don’t

document the interesting discussion carried on on

early Usenet, they do convey some of the general

concerns and views of the pioneering Usenet partici-

pants.

Many of those on early Usenet were program-

mers or system administrators. As such, they are

particularly sensitive to misspellings and other textual

and writing errors. In a post on NET.general, one user

gathered comments from all interested about concerns

about what they considered poor writing that ap-

peared on Usenet. In response, Rob Glaser from Yale

wrote (75):

It is true that many technical people use the

English language sloppily. In an informal setting

such as Usenet, however, content ought to be

valued over form, time lines over lengthy delib-

eration. I’d rather see a timely article with a few

grammatical mistakes (as long as it is basically

coherent) than the same piece, impeccably writ-

ten but appearing days later.”

He also observed that the software (inews) for

posting sometimes was problematic and helped create

the grammatical or other errors one saw online. He

wrote:

Another factor to keep in mind is that,

judging from some of the submissions we receive

over the net, the inews submission interface is

Page 32

not always conducive to perfection (not a slap at

the news designers, just the incompetents, myself

included, who make dumb mistakes.)

He then went on to describe how he had had to

redo even this post twice before getting it right. “For

instance,” he wrote, “I messed up two earlier versions

of this flame (one of which may have been sent, my

apologies if it was) before (*pray*) finally getting

things right.”

Other posts on NET.general included requests for

recommendations for buying something worthwhile or

complaints about problems users were having with

commercial entities to see if others had similar prob-

lems or could help.

For example, a post by Larry Piovano (76) de-

scribed how he was planning to buy a color tv with a

13" screen. He asked for recommendations and experi-

ences of others to help him decide which brand to get.

“I wish to buy one,” he wrote, “that will not die in

short order.” Bill Shannon from Digital Equipment

answered (77), “My 12 inch Sony has been going

strong for 10 years with no repairs, no adjustments, no

problems! And I’m sure they’ve gotten better (and

more expensive).” A response on Usenet responded

(78):

Suggest SONY. I have two Trinitrons and

they work wonderfully....”

The post continued:

I have had my SONY for a couple of years

now and have had no problem. I suggest you get

one with an electronic tuner (no moving parts to

wear out). Try the wireless remote control. It’s a

great toy if your lazy.”

A similar question about recommendations

regarding the Hayes Smart modem was posed by John

L. McAlpine in Canada at the Saskatchewan Linear

Accelerator. He wrote (79):

Use of HAYES Smart Modem

1) I would appreciate receiving comments on

the reliability of above modem.

2) If anyone has available the appropriate

patches to use this modem with uucp for auto-

dialing I would appreciate receiving same.

A post by Ron Gordon at Bell Labs (Murray Hill)

warned other Volkswagon Rabbit owners of a potential

radiator tank leak. He wrote (80):

Attention VW Rabbit owners, you may have

a problem! The radiator overflow tank on my

vehicle developed several cracks which permitted

coolant to escape. Because the overflow tank is

directly connected to the radiator system without

a valve, a leak in the overflow tank is just as bad

as a leak in the radiator!

He went on to ask if other VW Rabbit owners

were having a similar problem. “My tank failed after

16 months at 15,000 miles,” he wrote, “Should

enough evidence become available, a formal com-

plaint may be filed with VW and the Consumer

Protection Agency.”

Another Usenet poster asked if there could be a

consumer forum newsgroup to monitor companies

that ripoff consumers. In his post, Randy King wrote

(81):

What provisions, if any, have been made to

provide a sharing of gripes about national

“ripoff” companies and the like? I would like to

hear some comment on this, as well as see the

establishment of a newsgroup (as if any more

were needed). It might be very interesting to see

what goes [on-ed] out there and to provide read-

ers with some insight to companies so that they

may not be smitten by these “invisible stalkers!

“What’s the feeling out there,” his post asked.

Responding to an answer by Andy Tanenbaum

from Bell Labs about the intent of his post, King

wrote that he had had in mind an insurance company,

but that the forum could discuss both problematic and

beneficial companies. (82)

Several of the posts on NET.general suggested

creating new newsgroups, such as a post by Linda

Seltzer at Bell Labs (83):

I would like to start a newsgroup called

net.music for communication among composers,

news of concerts and conferences, news about

computer music, news of good new records, etc.

Anyone interested in subscribing to this group

please send mail to research.lin or alice.seltzer

— Linda Seltzer

Another post noted that her e-mail was inaccurate

in her post, and that it should be alice!seltzer (84).

Other posts concerned general questions or

problems. For example, Andy Tanenbaum posted

about a piece of junk mail he had received from a

head hunter who seemed to have gotten his name

from the list of conference attendees who attended the

previous USENIX winter conference (85). “I DON’T

want junk mail from employment agencies,” he

wrote. “If you want to put up a recruiting note at a

USENIX, fine. But as long as I have a means here to

express my dissatisfaction, I want it to be known that

Page 33

I look with bad feelings toward companies that badger

me by abusing a valuable resource.” His post ended, “I

wouldn’t want a future list of conferees to not have

addresses just because some losers bother some of the

good folks on the list with junk mail. Don’t call us,

we’ll call you.”

A post by Jay Lepreau asked if there were any

archive of bugs for software that had been posted on

Usenet so he wouldn’t have to do work others had

already done. He wrote (86):

Has anyone out there been archiving any of

the “net.*bugs” newsgroups or just have old stuff

still kicking around? We just joined Usenet

around the beginning of November; if anyone has

stuff from before that I’d appreciate hearing from

you. I’m TIRED of fixing bugs I know have been

found and fixed before. I can send you a shell

script to pull stuff out of your .nindex if you’ve

got A news; I don’t know how B news works.

A post from Scott Baden announced (87) that he

was in the process of creating an annotated bibliogra-

phy on two topics: “Functional Programming lan-

guages” and about “Applicative architectures.” He

asked those with any references or comments to e-mail

them to him, promising, “I’ll make a copy of the

bibliography available to all interested parties. If you

have already started a bibliography I’d be interested in

collaborating with you.”

News items were posted as was one on the AT&T

settlement with the U.S. government posted on January

8, 1982 by Steve Bellovin. The post explained (88):

AT&T and the U.S. government have settled

their seven-year-old anti-trust suit out of court.

Under the terms of the settlement, AT&T will

divest itself of the local operating companies; it

will retain AT&T Long Lines (the long distance

service), Western Electric, and Bell Labs. The

reorganization will be completed within 18

months.

Questions about Usenet were posted, as in a post

by Randy King asking how long it took a post to get to

the majority on Usenet. He wrote (89):

This may have been answered long before my

emergence onto netnews, but I will ask it anyway!

Does anybody have a feel for how long it takes a

posted article to reach the majority of the netnews

community? I realize that there are N! variables

here, but a general ordinary run-of-the mill answer

would suffice. Two Days? Three Days? A month?

Fifteen minutes? (HA). How ‘bout it.

A response from Horton described the process of

distribution of Netnews during this period. He wrote

(90):

It depends on the newsgroup and where you

are. If you are somewhere inside Bell Labs or on

a key machine with a dialer (decvax, duke) it will

probably get out to 70 - 80% of the net within a

few hours. If not, you probably have to wait for

an overnight poll, but it will get most places

(>90%) overnight. There are some far reaches

that won’t get it for 2-3 days (more if something

is down) and it may take another 2-3 days for a

reply or follow-up to get back to you.

Horton went on to describe how distribution of

the Mailing Lists carried on Usenet occurred. He

wrote:

The fa newsgroups are different. They are

fed in at Berkeley which then waits for ihnss [at

Bell Labs-ed] and decvax [at Digital Equipment

Corp-ed] to poll. ihnss only polls once a day (in

the early morning). decvax calls often. So Bell

Labs (which gets most stuff from ihnss) tends to

have fa stuff each morning from the previous

day. Those getting news from duke or decvax get

it randomly, faster depending on when decvax

happens to call ucbvax (at Berkeley-ed) usually

several time a day.

Horton also described other delays affecting how

users got news from Usenet. He wrote:

And of course there are the delays from the

time the news shows up on a system to when any

given person actually reads it - often once a day,

but some people log in on neighboring machines

to get news and don’t get it that often. I have

gotten replies to queries as much as 3 weeks

later, not counting the famous unix-wizards

drought where it took 2 months to reach the

masses before it even got into Usenet!

In summary, he wrote, “But a rough rule of

thumb is that by overnight, most of the net will have

at least had the chance to read your article.”

Along with the advantages of being on Netnews

were the problems that users were confronted with.

One such problem concerned discussion over what

was appropriate discussion or in bad taste. Others

claimed it was censorship to bar certain discussions.

Describing this problem, Horton wrote:

Also, PLEASE restrict your “questionable

taste” stuff to net.jokes.q for the time being until

this whole thing is settled. I am seeing stuff in

Page 34

net.general about dead babies that certainly of-

fends me (and no, I’m neither dead nor a baby)

and probably half the rest of the net. I’m still

seeing poor taste jokes in net.jokes. There are

people out there that are trying not to get this

stuff, and they are being barraged with it anyway!

This includes limericks - most of them belong in

net.jokes.q. If you would be willing to get on your

local TV station and recite what you’re posting

(with your mother and your boss in the audience)

you shouldn’t be broadcasting it to an equally

wide audience of random people. Remember, also,

that a record is kept on every machine of every-

thing you say.

He also asked for input from those who found

such posts offensive toward trying to determine an

appropriate policy with regard to such posts. He wrote

(91):

I haven’t been hearing from many people

who actually ARE OFFENDED by the net.jokes.q

stuff. I’d like to get input from them (either pri-

vately by electronic mail or publicly in net.news)

in regards to the policy that needs to be formed.

How you feel about various proposed solutions is

important. Anyone who further understands the

Affirmative Action issues should speak up -- I

don’t claim to understand them very well.

Another concern involved what were appropriate

posts on Usenet. J. C. Winterton asked that users not

post articles from the wire services but instead that

people subscribe to newspapers for such information

rather than trying to send it around on Usenet. He

wrote (92):

Notwithstanding the fact that some persons

do work for Bell, it STILL costs a bundle to send

this stuff around the continent on this network

when it is being shipped by the wire services

anyway. Why not just subscribe to a large daily

newspaper or two. If you really are interested in

the entertainment world you can subscribe to

Variety. The New York Times and the Times of

London probably carry everything else. And

where these are unavailable, there are other major

papers. I don’t believe that Usenet should become

an arm of AP, Reuters, etc. I am reasonably sure

that they would be somewhat upset with the

infringing of their copyright as well. That a thing

can be done is not a reason to do it! Besides, by

distributing wire service stuff this way (with or

without authorization) is probably helping to un-

employ some poor newspaper carrier, etc. etc.”

Commenting on the proliferation of new news-

groups and newsgroup names, Horton promised to

issue a list of the newsgroups “officially blessed” to

help resolve the problems of multiple names for

similar groups. But he also encouraged those with

various views on the issue to speak up. He wrote (93):

I am coming to realized that people are

waiting for me to say something. We are discuss-

ing what to do about the proliferation of news-

groups - if you want to be involved in this discus-

sion please send me mail. (We might even, ahem,

start a newsgroup.) I hope to have a list of active

newsgroups, “officially blessed” (whatever that

means), in a few days.

Chain letters also posed a problem on early

Usenet. Henry Spencer from the University of To-

ronto posted asking users to recognize the problem

and keep it from harming the Net. He wrote (94):

Some turkeys evidently have decided it’s

funny, funny, funny to start sending chain letters

around Usenet. With all the mail headers on

them, these messages are many Kbytes. For some

strange reason, when we’re paying phone bills

for 300-baud long distance calls, this does not

seem amusing. This is EXACTLY the sort of

thing that could lead to humorless administrators

closing down people’s network connections on

the grounds that the money is being wasted. For

heaven’s sake people, STOP IT!!! Your thought-

less empty-headed practical joke is endangering

the network that many people worked long and

hard to set up!

Noting the kinds of problems those on Usenet

had to deal with, Horton observed the obligation to

those on Usenet to consider its best interest. He urged

that those with different views of the issues involved

be active and participate in the discussions over what

to do (95). “I propose that anyone with opinions on

this issue discuss it on net.news. I want to hear from

both sides. This is YOUR NETWORK, remember!

Others on Usenet had hoped that it would make

it possible to form a new form of media or to

influence the political process in a way not formerly

available. “Not to belittle any new newsgroup,”

George Otto wrote (96), “but it strikes me that we are

developing a real electronic newspaper here.”

In a similar way, rdg at allegra wrote (97),

“Wouldn’t it be great to use this electronic medium to

send notes to our government officials. I never seem

Page 35

to write postal letters or telegrams, but we all seem to

find these electric notes enough to use often. Can you

image net.reagan with a few authentic replies.”

Scott Baden added (98), “Or what if we could

lobby our favorite senator? (net.lobby, net.senator?)”

The dilemma of funding Usenet posed a problem

to some sites as described in the post by Chris Kent at

the University of Cincinnati. He wrote (99):

We at the University of Cincinnati are on a

budget crunch. Therefore, I have been told to cut

down on outgoing calls or lose the ability to place

them. I ask you all to cooperate, please; try to

avoid routing program sources through us when-

ever possible. We will continue to transship news,

so that won’t be a problem, but will probably poll

only every other day....I am sorry it has to come to

this -- but some people higher up seem to see this

as just wasted money. I will keep you all posted as

to our situation.

Chris Kent (cincy!chris)

Others like Mel Haas at Bell Labs (houxm)

reported that the funding of various sites could be

jeopardized by an irresponsible activity on the net and

that all users should be aware of the problems that

might be caused. He wrote (100):

This is a plea to clean up the net. Please!

There are whole sections of the net that are being

watched by the payers of the bills, and what

shows now is not good. The flame and flash

content of the past few weeks has far outweighed

the useful. Don’t revive the “db” stuff in

net.cooks! Don’t send everything to net.general!

and, certainly, don’t send anything to both

net.general and another! Put net.news stuff in

net.news, net.records stuff in net.records, etc.

Show some consideration for others in the word-

ing and content of your submittals.

He pointed out that responsible use would help

establish how the Net was a money saver for the sites

participating and thus support continued use. He wrote:

Try to make the net a useful exchange of

useful information and ideas, that will pay for the

service and help people. In other words, make the

net a useful tool, not a place to expose yourself,

your ego and your bad manners. Thank you. Mel

Haas, houxm!mel

Explaining his need for access to Usenet even

though he was would no longer have Net access

through the University of California Berkeley, Michael

Shilol wrote (101):

I recently graduated from Berkeley where I

enjoyed this network very much, both for enter-

tainment and for receiving the latest news on

many subjects.

I am now starting a job and will soon be

losing my account on the Berkeley Vax. My

question is:

Is it possible for me to get access to this

network in any way?

Can my company get access to it?

Is there a way to pay for this privilege?

He noted that the useful technical information

available on Usenet was so valuable that a company

could benefit financially from being connected, “This

network has been so useful to me for finding informa-

tion that I think it is worth money and/or equipment

to get it.”

And he concluded his post:

“Any answers, comments, suggestions appre-

ciated.”

He then had a form of signature giving both

UUCP and ARPAnet address forms.

Michael Shiloh

CSVAX.shiloh@berkekey

UCBVAX!shiloh

In another post, George Otto at Indian Hill Bell

Labs noted the technical superiority of Usenet

newsgroups to mailing lists. He described the problem

of keeping mailing lists on different computers in

sync. He wrote (102):

Is anyone working on making mailing lists

just as efficient as newsgroups? One problem

with using mailing lists for maintaining commu-

nications among those in a small group of people

is the difficulty of keeping the lists on many

machines in sync. I tried looking into setting up

a program under my ID that would allow others

to mail to me for automatic redistribution to a list

I maintained, but never found a good way to do

it.

He noted that Usenet solved the problem in a

superior way by making it possible for people con-

nected to different computers to participate in a

common newsgroup. He wrote:

The beauty of using Usenet it that members

of affected groups can be on different machines

and need do one or two simple things to be

attached to the common group.

Conclusion

Page 36

These posts on NET.general show how those

using different computers at a wide variety of different

academic and research sites, many of which were not

officially sponsored by any funding agency, were able

to participate in the kind of collaborative communi-

cation and some of the mailing lists formerly only

available to those with access to the ARPAnet. More

importantly, Usenet made the process of posing a

problem and collaborating with others to try to deter-

mine how to solve it more widely available. Such a

process is needed to solve the difficult technical and

social problems which computers and networking

technology present for our times. Habermas writes that

there is a need to understand such a scientific approach

to technical issues and challenges. What he doesn’t

recognize is that the technology itself is needed to help

in the process. The early ARPAnet as demonstrated

through posts on the MsgGroup mailing list and early

Usenet provide beginning insight into how people

using and directing technology can be part of the

important scientific and regenerative process that

contributing to the online community makes possible.

*Note: The notes corresponding to the numbers in the above

ar ti cle are available from the author or at:

http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/msghist.txt

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben

(1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

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