randolph@cognito.Eng.Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz) (02/13/91)
I think that quite a few of the issues we are encountering with commerical e-mail and BBS systems were actually worked out in the very early history of telecommications and rail transport. Time was when telephone companies were very proud to interconnect with no-one. In the old small-town manual exchanges, monitoring and biased routing was the order of the day. One charming story has the inventor of the first automatic telephone switch being the owner of a funeral parlor and the town's telephone operator being married to the owner of another funeral parlor. A lot of this was resolved in communications and common carrier law; perhaps it's time we reviewed that history for lessons for our new technologies. nd t ou ui R Press T __Randolph Fritz sun!cognito.eng!randolph || randolph@eng.sun.com ou ui The global gossipy small town, planet Earth nd t