Who Runs This Show Anyway? (2)
The Internet is not a corporation; it’s a computer cooperative. Nobody owns the Internet and there’s no one you can hold accountable if the system breaks down, which it occasionally does.
Even so, the Internet’s quirky infrastructure is remarkably efficient at transmitting information from point A to point B. One way to understand the Internet is to compare it with the phone company. Due to public access laws, phone companies are required by law to offer a connection to anyone who wants one; no analogous requirements are yet in place for Internet connections (an important consideration for many businesses that we examine later in the site).
If you imagine how a phone system that connected only subscribers would work, you have a rough idea of how e-mail and other messages are transmitted through the network. You compose and address a message with the Internet equivalent of an area code and phone number: an e-mail address. Your local system then consults various databases to identify the unique computer address for the remote system, then directly feeds the message to that system.
The main backbone of the Internet is the National Science Foundation-funded NSF Network (NSFNet). The primary artery for research and academic Internet information flow, NSFNet prohibits all commercial traffic. Its acceptable-use policy excludes any advertising except for announcements of new products and services that would be of interest to the research and education community.
However, a second, parallel backbone run by the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX), a private cooperative venture, has no such restrictions. Because most Internet access providers and online services offer underlying CIX connectivity in addition to or instead of NSFNet, the remaining barriers to doing business on the Internet today are more cultural than regulatory. The government, meanwhile, is getting out of the Internet business; it’s planning to start reducing its $11,500,000 subsidy beginning in 1994.
As federal restrictions on Internet use drop away, the main barrier to advertising on the Internet is the Internet purists who believe that advertising is out of place there. Many users, especially those affiliated with government research institutions and universities, can be downright hostile to any sales pitches or junk mail that litter their electronic frontier. With that in mind, we advise you to adopt more passive strategies for making your corporate presence known on the information highway.