At 12:12 PM 3/9/96 -0500, Padgett Peterson wrote:

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"Long-Distance Dueling. Free Dialing Via Internet Faces a Challenge From Small Phone Firms." You seem to forget that the Internet is just about the *only* electronic communications media not controlled/licensed by the FCC in the US. The FCC also prohibits use of cryptography by those with amateur licenses.

Oh, we remember it :-). But actually, large chunks of the Internet's facilities _are_ on controlled or semi-controlled media, such as frame relay (which the Feds just insisted had to be tariffed) or local private-line (which is often regulated by state PUCs.) But in those cases, the regulation is at the price/quantity/schedule layer, rather than the content layer. And according to someone I talked to recently, the Network Access Points, MAE-East/West, (though not CIX), are still NSF-funded, even though they're often built and run by folks like PacBell - I'd thought we'd gotten rid of those guys a couple of years ago except for the NIC and Internic. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 # "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened # to halt the growth of Internet use. [...] Government control of news media # generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and # social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who # exceed the permissable." - US government statement on China...