Re: [ifwp] Re: Non-commercial speech on the Internet

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

	I don't like to disagree with Richard Sexton, whom I usually
find to be correct, but I don't think this is right. The amount of
Internet traffic between universities, hospitals, and other research
organizations is immense. It would be no exaggeration to say that
medical research, for example, now depends upon the Internet, not only
for rapid access to current reports in biomedical databases like Medline
and Biosis, but for the immediate, online contact between investigators
in laboratories that has permitted a revolution in collaborative
research, often between scientists at institutions on different
continents. Furthermore, the benefit to everyone of the rapid advances
that this permits should be obvious. 
	Perhaps even more consequential for the long term progress of
human society are the international communications between private
individuals, many of them professionals, which could never have occurred
before the Internet and which are permitting an international exchange
of ideas that is forging a previously inconceivable understanding
between peoples. Everyone benefits from this, because understanding
brings compassion and peace. 
	These are not a negligible part of Internet communications. I am
right now telnetting to my account from a cyber cafe in Paris which
opens at 8:30 A.M. and closes at 2:00 in the morning. There are twenty
posts. Every one is occupied until closing time, so that you have to
wait in line, by Americans, British, Africans, Japanese, people from
everywhere, doing their business just as if they were in New York or
Tokyo or in their home. Every one of them is serious, intelligent,
concentrated. There is no porn, not even playing of electronic games.
They are not sending love letters either, for the most part, but
studiously attending to their intellectual, artistic, scientific,
educational, or commercial affairs. These public access Internet points
are everywhere here, and spreading like wildfire, so great is the need
for the rapid, cheap, written contact that only the Internet can
provide.
	In the countries of South America, where economic
underdevelopment has restricted the expansion of telecommunications, the
Internet is becoming even more important than in Europe. The websites
and linking on the web in Argentina, for example, or Chile, is more
advanced even than in the U.S. in many cases, so great is their need, so
explosive is the release of creative energy that the Internet affords to
individual initiative.
	It is incorrect to judge the uses of the Internet solely by the
American experience, where great affluence but a serious social and
intellectual underdevelopment often restricts imaginatively the uses
made of it by individuals. The Internet is international and,
internationally, the proportion of its employment made by useful
citizens in useful endeavors is overwhelmingly the greatest part. 


On Mon, 17 Aug 1998, Richard J. Sexton wrote:

> At 03:38 PM 8/17/98 -0400, Martin B. Schwimmer wrote:
> >
> >I think that we are probably in agreement on many important issues
> >regarding the DNS - and I think neither of us want an unfair Dispute
> >Resolution Policy (i.e. NSI) or to have a New IANA which does not take into
> >account the rights of users (commercial or non-commercial) of the Internet.
> >
> >
> >At 11:56 AM 8/17/98 EDT, you wrote:
> >>Martin:
> >>
> >>Price Waterhouse conducted a study last year which it entitled "Top
> >>Web/Internet Activities."  It listed activities and time spent and found:
> >>
> >>research   43%
> >>email       34%
> >>games     9%
> >>online mag/news  5%
> >>online banking    2%
> >>two way voice    1%
> >>shopping   1%.
> 
> I guess this applies to the half the net that isn't porn.
> 
> I suspect the real world might look something like this:
> 
> downloadng dirty pictures: 75%
> reading and telling jokes: 15%
> flaming people on usenet: 5%
> arguing with idiots (by definition, anybody you don't agree with)  4%
> other stuff: 1%