From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Mon Dec 06 1999 - 04:38:49 MST
On Sat, Dec 04, 1999 at 12:14:56AM -0800, Zeb Haradon wrote:
> I can't say for sure about the first item - allowing phone companies to
> charge the access charge, but the fact that the second item (charging
> "postage" for e-mail sent) has been around for months and has already been
> revealed as a scam draws credibility away from the first item.
> This is an excellent example of an "information virus"
There is some substance behind it, though. For example, people with
accounts on JANET (the UK's Joint Academic NETwork) are charged per unit
transferred for data from outside the UK (that isn't cached by JANET's
mondo-huge web caches). This has horrible effects if some spod in the
'States decides to smurf an impecunious student in a hall of residence
at a UK university, who then has to prove that the intercontinental
network storm was nothing to do with them ...
-- Charlie
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