LIST RULES

Todd is new to the nets.  He sent the following to me by mistake.
He sent me another message and asked me to forward it to Cypherpunks.

------------- Begin Forwarded Message -------------
Date: Fri Feb 19 12:08:02 -0700 1993
From: internet!alembic.com!todd (Todd Steigerwald)
Subject: Re: LIST RULES
To: !ssandfort
Content-Length: 956



I will not "advertise" on the list as long as John prohibits it.
But I sincerely hope his prohibition does not discourage others
from discussing the issues it raises.  I would like to hear what
the rest of you think.


I do not argue with the decision to prohibit blatant advertising,  
however, with the increasing awareness of the internet and its  
potential, there is going to be more and more individuals that will  
want to extend beyond what it is currently being employed for.
	Regardless about individual feelings and ideals as to how and  
what the net should be used for, the issues WILL become increasingly  
debated, more than likely resulting in the eventual acceptance of  
advertising.  Simply put it is the new marketing frontier- many many  
people are seeing that already, and the beliefs of the few will not  
serve to stop it-as bad or good as that may be.

I will apologise beforehand since I am new to the net, but who is  
John?

It is conventional to avoid blatant commercial traffic on the Internet
and the USENET.  Part of this is because of the Acceptable Use
Policies which exist on parts of the net.  But a lot of it is that
people generally don't want to see random advertisements.  I throw
them away when the come in the paper mail; I don't want them in my
email, either.

The exceptions are lists where advertising is explicitly permitted,
and lists whose purpose is advertisements.  Many vendors maintain
lists to which they send pricing information, new product
announcements, etc.  This is fine, because I can ignore those lists
without missing anything I might really be interested.

If someone were involved with, say, selling licenses to use PGP
legally, or an electronic bank or escrow service, I think that might
be OK, since it is of *direct* interest to this list.  But even that
is a shady area.

If I want commercials, I subscribe to one of the appropriate lists.
You wouldn't want me discussing cooking techniques or airline travel
on cypherpunks , because it's not appropriate, and there are separate
forums for those topics.  Think of advertising the same way, and it
appears not like censorship, which it isn't, but simply staying on the
topic, which it is.

		Marc