77 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
77 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
From: Steve Nuchia <nuchat!steve@uunet.uu.net>
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Subject: Get Aquainted With COSUARD
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Reply-To: Steve Nuchia <nuchat!steve@uunet.uu.net>
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Organization: Houston Public Access
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COSUARD is the Coalition Of Sysops And Users Against Rate
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Discrimination, a group formed to combat a unilateral move by
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Southwestern Bell to "correct" the long-standing de-facto tarrif
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interpretation by which private hobby BBS's were classed and billed as
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residential service. The case is in the final stages of attempted
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negotiations toward a settlement, in my personal view it is likely to
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go to "trial" before the Texas Public Utilities Commission in the next
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few months. *
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COSUARD has a bulletin board with all the legal documents and a lot of
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discussion of the case if anyone wants to catch up. I don't have the
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number of the main board, which has been down lately anyway, but the
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board at (713) 787-5454 should have the important stuff.
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It is important to remember that the local phone companies in the U.S.
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are public utilities. They are government sponsored and regulated,
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privately owned monopolies. The services they offer and the rates
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they charge for those services are set by legislation (perhaps
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indirectly through a commission or other regulatory body). Therefore
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the question of what rate a customer should be charged is an equal
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protection question, not a supply-and-demand question.
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The legislation and administrative law that regulate the phone
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companies in most states is designed to further a public policy
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objective of universal access, and conciously sacrifices "fair"
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allocation of costs to do so. In Texas the applicable regulations
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essentially state that lines run to residences and not singled out by
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a list of special rules for business rates are to be charged the
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subsidized residential rates. The special cases basically reduce to
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business operation, generally conforming to what a reasonable layman
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would expect the term to mean (including organized non-profit activity
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as businesses).
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Southwestern Bell, which has a history of back-door maneuvering to the
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detriment of modem users in Oklahoma, has decided that ALL BBS's are
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actually businesses in disguise. Enough of that here, we can discuss
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it until the cows come home in alt.cosuard. Suffice it to say that,
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at least in the Texas case, line usage patterns are not the issue.
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This is true from a legal theory standpoint and has been stated on
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several occassion by representitives of SWB.
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Finally, why should you care what rate BBS operators are charged?
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Because the data communications hobby is an important source of
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innovation and practical experience in the technical aspects of the
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art, it serves to empower the handicapped, it has the potential to
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become a medium for democracy at a time when traditional media are
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abdicating the role, and it serves as a good-will ambasador for the
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industry, giving thousands of people a pleasant and meaningful
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introduction to computers.
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I like to draw an analogy between the data communications hobby of
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today and the ham radio hobby in its early days. In short, I stongly
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believe it is worth protecting, and it is vulnerable to economic
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pressure of the kind we are discussing. Many boards in Texas shut
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down when it looked like they might have to pay only about $15 more
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per month -- most boards operate on a very thin budget.
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Steve Nuchia, member of the board of COSUARD
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* -- COSUARD is not a party to the pending legal action (nor am I),
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but has a close cooperative relationship with the parties.
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Steve Nuchia South Coast Computing Services (713) 964-2462
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"Man is still the best computer that we can put aboard a spacecraft --
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and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor."
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- Wernher von Braun
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