Re: Undoing Monopoly by E-Mail

[Christopher Pall <x97pall@wmich.edu>]

  I and another have discussed what we thought we would like to see out of the
  list. I think it would be important that the email be sent to them from this
  domain in some fashion so that they either have a forum to respond or look to.
  Furthermore, it is important to me that this be sent from a non-commercial
  domain if possible. It would be nice if it were from here.
  
  And of course a huge thing to think about is whether or not this qualifies as
  SPAM?
  
  How can we follow up on our emailings?
  
  Why are we leaving out international leaders? Why are we sending this email to
  so many different reps when we possibly should just be contacting our reps.
  What is our document going to say? I think we should get started on this
  document now.
  
  Is our focus going to be on Microsoft as a monopoly? What exactly are we going
  to ask for?
  
  I'm thinking about writing about reform of computer "data" as a form of media,
  that by necessity must be a protected industry. Protected how? What counts as
  a form of media?
  
  We need to protect the Internet from becoming microtaxed to the hilt. We may
  have prevented the government from adding it's heavy hand of censorship (well,
  this is under heavy attack again) but the internet is coming under the control
  of private business. If only business runs the domain registration and major
  hub networks, do you think they aren't going to charge for it? Oh yes they
  will. This will cut out the cheap data bandwidth we have enjoyed on the
  internet for years. It may never prevent your personal web pages from being
  displayed, but it might prevent them from having a large audience. What does
  Microsoft have to do with this? Even now they are amassing cable companies,
  content providers and the like. While I'm more worried about the
  infrastructure of the internet being controlled by a few powers, this is just
  part of the alarming trend. I think this document can seek to have computers
  defined as a protected medium of communication. The internet is a powerful
  social change, we need to acknowledge how this must be allowed to continue
  without total corporate control. Corporate presence isn't bad. Corporate
  control is.
  
  And I think many of us agree that this definition of computers as a medium
  extends to the OS platform as well as all applications in general. But there's
  no way to take the corporation out of those. (Which is fine by me) So how can
  we define OS's and applicaitions as a medium which needs some new guidelines
  for business to compete under? And what can those guidelines be? Since we are
  all arguing for something to be done about Microsoft, perhaps this is well off
  the mark.
  
  What can we say we want done about Microsoft in that case?
  
  My mind is far from convinced about any of the above.
  
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                Christopher Pall
  Delphi Programmer & Western Michigan Student (CS)
                   ThinkBiz
                Kalamazoo MI USA
               X97PALL@WMICH.EDU
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