>I have always been a little skeptical of those of us who
>feel that all advertising is bad.  I think that if I use
>a list to ask for information to relay to a library client
>I am using the list to further my economic interest. My job
>and livelihood depends on my using the Internet to a fair
>degree.
 
This is well and good, for several reasons:
 
        1) You've taken the time to find a proper forum,
           where such initiatives are (within reason) welcome.
 
        2) There's a difference between finding information
           for a client (I do that all the time; my clients
           are professors and students) and arbitrarily ad-
           vertising one's service.  I have no problem with
           most such uses of online forums.
 
        3) There's a difference between addressing a notice
           to a list (even an inappropriate list) and mass
           mailing to a collection of email addresses.  I
           shudder to think what will happen when some ad-
           vertiser discovers this campus' online directory.
 
        4) There's already been one incident in the Unix world.
           When entering the UUCP universe, each site is supposed
           to submit a "map entry;" this entry includes the "real
           world" address for the site admin.  A vendor recently
           collected up all these addresses and sent out a mass
           mailing.  The reaction to that mailing (and the means
           by which the addresses were secured) would be instruc-
           tive for *any* firm considering Internet advertising.
 
I'm concerned about the folks who will, inevitably, apply
the precepts of junk mail and "junk fax" to electronic forums.
I've fought for months with a single company that insisted on
sending me 2- to 10-page faxes every other month; I pay for my
fax transmissions, and I have no desired to received unsolicited
information.  As a result, I have ensured that no one in this
domain (engr.uky.edu) will be purchasing from that firm.
 
>There are commercial companies that pay a fee to be a part
>of the Internet. Why should they not be a part of this
>enterprise. I have this gut feeling that businesses also
>pay taxes, some of which are used to subsidise the costs
>of the Internet.
 
Sure, there have been such subsidies; most of them are in
various stages of disappearance.
 
>Perhaps we can give it a little more thought.
 
If people want to create lists for advertisements or distribute
them through lists which accept them, I have no problem with that.
I have *big* problems with those compaines that will, inevitably,
see BITNET/Internet as a high-end demographic group and start the
junk mail, filling our mail spools with tripe.
 
--Wes