>I've been associated with the Internet for a VERY VERY long time, and it
>has -never- made sense to me that it has never had a proper cost recovery
>model that involved paying for what you use (I lay this problem on NSF's
>doorstep; the situation was arguably different for DCA and ARPA, but
>there was never any excuse, IMO, for NSF not to put in proper
>accountability/accounting). What's interesting is that it'd be
>relatively easy to do: every router and gateway already keeps enough
>statistics to be able to generate bills for the next person 'downstream'.
>Scary/intriguing thoughts, but it ain't gonna happen, more's-the-pity,
>and so we're still left with the mess...
I think that if there had been a 'pay for all use at the individual point'
system, there would be no Internet. There would of course be proprietory
networks for business etc and people would still be trying to get us to
subscribe to various services and no doubt we would.
Of course, every business does pay for its traffic. One of the reasons the
Internet has worked so well is because its made us all think very hard
about how to pay for the services that we know the Internet should provide.
That's not to say there shouldn't be restrictions on some activities, but
again this forces us to be creative.
But, to say that we should have had 'pay for what you use' from the start
misses the point that there would be no Internet if that had been the case.
Ivan
