Re: nettime: nettme: the tide pool with the toll booth

[Steve Cisler <sac@apple.com>]

McKenzie,
I agree that some systems, perhaps even the WELL, are much like American
automobile parks where you will suffer 'severe tire damage' if you try
to drive your car in certain exits because of the jagged metal protruding
from the pavement --but only in one direction.

Bruce Sterling has collected interesting net copyright statements that
illustrate individuals reactions to the changing nature of the gift
economiy that once characterized the Internet (perhaps up until late
1993).  I still post my own reports with a prohibition (that I can't
easily enforce) against mirroring, archiving on proxy or regular 
commercial web sites, gopher or ftp servers.  That's getting harder and
harder to define these days.

In the days when The WELL started, the second or third community network
started in Santa Monica, California.  They decided to restrict traffic
to residents and property owners in Santa Monica; the system was not
connected to the ARPANet or to anything but the local phone system.
They did have a tie in with Oita province in Japan, but I th/ink they
tried to keep their traffic and flow of ideas, rants, and information
very local.  I know they were very worried they'd be inundated by the
huge numbers of online residents in neighboring Los Angeles if they
opened it up.  

The WELL, too, has always had a tension between the global and the
local. There were plans to replicate the WELL around the U.S. and 
mirror conferences, and this met quite a bit of resistance, as I recall.

Again, I repeat that I like the diversity and relative openness of
nettime, but I'm sure the moderators would balk if they found  CD-ROMs
being peddled with all the nettime postings available as an intellectual
artifact rather than a living interchange of ideas and opinions.

Steve Cisler
Network Outreach
sac@apple.com
--
*  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
*  <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
*  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
*  more info: majordomo@is.in-berlin.de and "info nettime" in the msg body
*  URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/  contact: nettime-owner@is.in-berlin.de