Todd is new to the nets. He sent the following to me by mistake. He sent me another message and asked me to forward it to Cypherpunks. ------------- Begin Forwarded Message ------------- Date: Fri Feb 19 12:08:02 -0700 1993 From: internet!alembic.com!todd (Todd Steigerwald) Subject: Re: LIST RULES To: !ssandfort Content-Length: 956 I will not "advertise" on the list as long as John prohibits it. But I sincerely hope his prohibition does not discourage others from discussing the issues it raises. I would like to hear what the rest of you think. I do not argue with the decision to prohibit blatant advertising, however, with the increasing awareness of the internet and its potential, there is going to be more and more individuals that will want to extend beyond what it is currently being employed for. Regardless about individual feelings and ideals as to how and what the net should be used for, the issues WILL become increasingly debated, more than likely resulting in the eventual acceptance of advertising. Simply put it is the new marketing frontier- many many people are seeing that already, and the beliefs of the few will not serve to stop it-as bad or good as that may be. I will apologise beforehand since I am new to the net, but who is John?
It is conventional to avoid blatant commercial traffic on the Internet and the USENET. Part of this is because of the Acceptable Use Policies which exist on parts of the net. But a lot of it is that people generally don't want to see random advertisements. I throw them away when the come in the paper mail; I don't want them in my email, either. The exceptions are lists where advertising is explicitly permitted, and lists whose purpose is advertisements. Many vendors maintain lists to which they send pricing information, new product announcements, etc. This is fine, because I can ignore those lists without missing anything I might really be interested. If someone were involved with, say, selling licenses to use PGP legally, or an electronic bank or escrow service, I think that might be OK, since it is of *direct* interest to this list. But even that is a shady area. If I want commercials, I subscribe to one of the appropriate lists. You wouldn't want me discussing cooking techniques or airline travel on cypherpunks , because it's not appropriate, and there are separate forums for those topics. Think of advertising the same way, and it appears not like censorship, which it isn't, but simply staying on the topic, which it is. Marc
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Marc Horowitz -
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