Re: U.S. Postal Service proposal: restricting domain names to street addresses

[Michael Sondow <msondow@ic.sunysb.edu>]

Quite so.



On Fri, 14 Aug 1998, Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:

> At 11:24 AM 8/14/98 -0400, Michael Sondow wrote:
> >I fail to see the logic behind your arguments. If e-mail can go to a
> >street address, it is no more than a telegram. Why, then, has all the
> >trouble to set up networked digital communications be taken? 
> 
> Actually, the idea, around our boardroom, was to install an envelope
> stuffer, which would convert an email to a letter, in order to send e-mail
> to folks (friends/relatives/family) who did not have e-mail at all. We
> figured it to be a logistical nightmare, for us. Someone else may actually
> get it to work. It should be reasonably profitable. Cheaper than a telegram
> but more expensive than a letter, even if more convenient. Also, it's
> really out of MHSC business scope and mission. There are other problems
> wrt, file-attachments.<grin> MHSC wants 1% if you can make it work<grin>.
> 
> >Surely the
> >whole point to the Internet is that it serves two-way communication that
> >is not restricted by geography: you can get your e-mail anywhere, change
> >your e-mail address or your domain name from one ISP or server to
> >another, alias mail, bounce it, forward it at will.
> 
> >If community groups wish to set up local (geographical) lists, nothing
> >is stopping them from walking around the heighborhood and collecting
> >people's e-mail addresses. It is not necessary, and would not work, for
> >the addresses to be somehow defined by the neighborhood. People move.
> 
> Here is the real problem. The work involved around address changes would be
> emmense. Personally, I have moved between California, Texas, Ohio, and
> Colorado, over 6 times, between 1989 and 1995. In order to keep things
> straight, I wound up having to get a box at a "Mail Boxes Etc." (MBE)
> because the postal service was not keeping up with me. I was getting mail
> as much as a year late. Now, someone wants those same yahoos to maintain
> the .US domain and geographical e-mail boxen? Who had *that* brain-fart?
> 
> Besides, one site with machines to automate the conversion, and an address
> given my the user (only checked for format), stamp it, and put it in the
> postal system. USPS will even give a special deal on postage, just like an
> MBE. The whole shebanggy can be 98% automated.
> 
> Where in here is there a requirement for a physically located e-mail
> address? The answer is that you don't need it. The whole idea has the
> merits of a fart in a hurricane.
> 
> >Others who live there, and by your argument would have an address with a
> >local definition, do not want to be in the community group.
> >
> >Perhaps I should not have said "the spirit of universality", but rather
> >"the spirit of extra-territoriality", for surely it is this spirit which
> >has acted as a game plan, a foundation, for the extension of the
> >Internet over the earth. Communities are free to form, but they are not
> >restricted in their formation, not by color, not by religion, not by
> >age, not by sex, and no longer by neighborhood, or state.
> >
> >                             
> >                               Michael Sondow
> >
> >
> >
> >On Fri, 14 Aug 1998, Nathaniel Borenstein wrote:
> >
> >> Excerpts from cpsr.bulk: 14-Aug-98 U.S. Postal Service proposa.. Michael
> >> Sondow@ic.sunysb (894*)
> >> 
> >> > 	I am categorically opposed to all and any definition,
> >> > restriction, or limitation of domain names by geographical street
> >> > addresses. Such restriction is totally antithetical to the spirit of
> >> > universality of Internet communications. Better would be the
> >> > abandonment, internationally, of ccTLDs. 
> >> 
> >> I personally have a hard time seeing why you think this.  I think it
> >> would be very good for communities, for example, if you could send email
> >> to your neighbors by their street address, or set up mailing lists for
> >> everyone in your block or neighborhood.  How is this antithetical to the
> >> "spirit of universality"?  -- Nathaniel
> >> --------
> >> Unless all existence is a medium of revelation, no particular revelation is
> >> possible.	-- William Temple
> >> 
> >> Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb+faq@guppylake.com>
> >> 
> >
> 
> ___________________________________________________ 
> Roeland M.J. Meyer, ISOC (InterNIC RM993) 
> e-mail: <mailto:rmeyer@mhsc.com>rmeyer@mhsc.com
> Internet phone: hawk.mhsc.com
> Personal web pages: <http://www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer>www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer
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