Path: cdrom.com!barrnet.net!sgiblab!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!news.funet.fi!ngw!news.funet.fi!not-for-mail From: Ted Hathaway Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom Subject: Commercialism on the Internet Date: 27 Feb 1994 21:18:18 +0200 Organization: FUNET-NGW Lines: 34 Sender: daemon@news.funet.fi Distribution: alt Message-ID: <01H9DL5NILC2DNYP10@vz.cis.umn.edu> Reply-To: THATHAWAY@VZ.CIS.UMN.EDU NNTP-Posting-Host: news.funet.fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Return-Path: <@UCCVMA.UCOP.EDU:THATHAWAY@VZ.CIS.UMN.EDU> X-Envelope-To: cdrom-l@uccvma.BITNET X-Vms-To: IN%"cdrom-l@uccvma.bitnet" To: CDROM-L Redistribution I hope I don't seem wishy-washy, but I tend to agree with both sides of this issue. On the one hand, these "commercials" often provide very useful info on materials you may want to get. Even if they bother you sometimes, you can usually pick them out from your mail directory listing and skip reading them. It's not quite the same as commercials on TV and Radio, which are actual interruptions that you cannot avoid. They're more like ads in a magazine that you simply avoid by turning the page. However, I am concerned that as the Internet becomes increasingly interesting to the commercial sector, we may find our bulletin boards and listserver more and more inundated by such "commercials." I don't know about the rest of you, but I get over 100 messages a day, and I don't have time to read even a quarter of them. Most of the time I have to judge from the subject tags and go on from there. If we have a bunch of firms out there automatically spewing out ads over the 'Net, I may find that going up to 200, 500, or a 1,000 messages a day. The stuff I want and need to read will likely get lost. What happens when the 'Net loses govt funding and must prostitute itself to business interests (as has virtually everything else in America, it sometimes seems)? Will our bulletin boards/listservers lose control over the content of their messages? Will we be left with a great pile of garbage burying the few worth while things that remain? I would like to continue to receive some amount of the "commercials" over the 'Net - I can actually use them now and then, and I have had occasion to use the 'Net for such purposes myself (specifically, an announcement for a new publication put out by a non-profit organization), but I would also like to see their numbers remain small and the great majority of the messages be from the subscribers to the bbs/listservs. Is this wanting one's cake and eating it, too? I hope not. ***************************************************************** Ted Hathaway Librarian Extraordinaire (612) 372-6642 Minneapolis Public Library THATHAWAY@VZ.CIS.UMN.EDU Tech-Sci-Fi-Gov-Doc-Horror Dept *****************************************************************