randall@Virginia.EDU (Randall Atkinson) (04/09/91)
In article <5810001@hpsgwp.sgp.hp.com> plim@hpsgwp.sgp.hp.com (Peter Lim) writes: >Just wondering. If Borland were to formally setup technical support on >usenet and start taking questions and answering them, won't that >become USING (or ABUSING) USENET FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSE ? Isn't that >something forbidden by the rule ? (That is a very big IF above and Borland have given no indication that they plan any such thing. I'm following through though with an outline of the current policy and restrictions as I understand them. Followups are redirected to news.admin since this is really a news administration issue.) The "Commercial Use" restrictions apply to the Internet and to other US Gov't funded networks. HP reportedly began an experimental effort last fall to support HP users with Internet access via e-mail. Many other firms also support users via email at present (MKS does an unusually good job with this :-). In all cases that I am aware of, the policy has apparently been construed to permit support-via-email provided there is no fee required to get such support (since that would be commercial). In general, the Internet exists to support educational and research activities and to the extent that support-by-email is in fact supporting those educational and research activities, it should be allowable. Now I don't have any influence on such policy decisions myself and I'm just reporting what I see and hear (and that might not be accurate if I'm not hearing correctly :-). Also, it seems clear that with the connectivity between various networks using the Internet as a hub increasing, the policies will probably be refined. (BIX and GENIE are the only services that seem to be inaccessible from the Internet via mail.) Now the USENET policy originally derived from the Internet policy and has since taken on a life of its own due to corporations not wanting to indirectly subsidise other firms' profit-making activities. This is one reason that there is a separate BIZ.* network that is NOT part of USENET proper. BIZ.* doesn't have commercial use restrictions (though it is still free) and has vendor-specific forums on it. BIZ.* is transported using the normal netnews software, but has much less connectivity due to organisations not wanting to carry such traffic. Certainly Borland's presence to date has been less active and assertive than that of say Zortech. I don't see that a Borland or Zortech or ... presence in responding to specific questions via news or mail is a problem here at this point. I think that if the newsgroups start to become inundated with support postings then reconsideration will need to be made. I've chatted with Sidney at Borland and have been impressed with his apparent efforts to make sure that Borland conforms to the net customs in this and other regards. Note that new product postings should only be posted in comp.newprod so that commercial traffic can be neatly not carried by the sites that aren't allowed to carry it. Randall Atkinson randall@Virginia.EDU