On Wednesday, May 28, 2003, at 01:42 PM, David Morris wrote:
In the USA today, it costs $.37 to send a physical mail. I don't think
it
unreasonable for someone sending me mail to pay a similar fee and
conversely for me to pay such a fee for each of my posts to the IETF
list,
even though I would expect the list to use a free channel to distribute
the result.
Really? I email with people who would not be able to afford $.37 to
send me an email. (They live developing nations.)
I don't believe there is any right to free mail or email service so I
don't see a reason to be overly concerned that a user of a community
computer can't send free email.
But consider that the internet today is based on widely available free
email. There would be major changes to the whole email dynamic if that
changed. Besides people who have different economics at work, Another
that comes to mind is people who use email interfaces to websites,
maybe because they're firewalled at work, or they can only use a
store-and-forward system if they on a sufficiently remote / slow link
(in a very remote area, this could include researchers as well as
people who simply live in a very rural place).
simon