Well, pardners, as I reckon you know, all us old 'Nauts like to gather
around the Cyberfire at the end of the day to trade news and spin tales.
'Course, there's always room in the circle for a newbie or two, so long
as they don't commit too many misdemeeners, like sendin' unsubscribe to
the whole list, or lettin' their boss's latest product gouge loose in
the nntp.
On a recent evenin', with the sun asettin' and the coffee perkin', the
talk turned to some doggone scary news from the city of Washington. One
of my net buddies asked me, "Say, Mountain Mike, you spend a lot of time
in that Capitol they have over there -- some say too much time! What's
this I hear about a 'taking' of the range?"
"Well, Sam, I do admit to visiting that Capitol building from time to
time, and, yes, it's true, the Congress is lookin' at a bill to fence
the range."
A chorus of 'No's' rose into the night. One dark feller, I fergit his
name, said, "Nobody's gonna fence me off the cyberrange! My blue box
will vaporize a mile of fence at a time!"
And young Ray said, "You mean after I put my Pentium saddle on that new-
bought pony, and pay my trail fee to them nice folks at PSInet, I'm not
going to be able to ride to Amarillo?"
"Nope," I said to them. "They're coming out to Cyberspace and they say
they're gonna fence twenty thousand sections off for the public."
"The public? What do you mean, the public? I thought we was the public.
I've always paid my trail fees and only been in jail that one time for
public drunkenness. Who are these people that are gonna keep us off the
range?"
"Some new bunch of U.S. Marshals, callin' themselves the 'FCC
Enforcers.'
They're gonna allocate the range!"
"Allocate the Cyberrange!" said my friend Gary. "How'd we get to this
sad pass?"
"Well," I explained, "you remember back when NTSC was a baby, and we
decided that folks ought to be able to git away from that awful
advertising once in awhile? And you remember how we reserved some
channels for public telly vision? Well, now that net technology is
pullin' the pins out from under all the analog stuff, the public telly
vision folks is real anxious about their future, and who could blame
them? So they hired a lady lawyer in DC, and she cooked up this bill to
fence the range for the public according to how they see things!"
Across the fire, Scott asked, "Any of these varmints ever been to an
IETF pow-wow? Joined a Working Group?"
"Not so's I can tell. They don't appear to know a bit for a byte, a
packet for a cell. I asked 'em about MPEG2 and they thought I was
talking about Head Start! Even worse, them corporate ranchers are
polishing up their Brownings and loading double-ought shot. Seems as
though some folks is gonna get cut up bad afore this is over."
Richard, the coolest head in the circle, said, "As I recollect, no one
wins in a range war. What's the Veep say?"
"When Al rides with us, he says the fences have to come down. If we want
cyberjobs and better cyberwages, and the range spreading across the
ocean, then we've all got to work together. He's got his wranglers Tom
and Mike out there spreading the word, but some of these old-style folks
don't want to climb on board."
Out of the dimness, a timid newbie voice asked, "Don't nobody have a
game plan to deal with this?"
"Yeah. The Honorable Mitch, holder of Cyberspace First Ordinal Rank, got
together with the Honorable Ed, sponsor of another bill in Congress, and
worked out new rules for riding the range. It says the trail operators
have to keep the trails open, that they have to charge just and
reasonable fees, and that everybody gets to go both ways. It's up for a
vote this summer."
"Well, why fence the range if we're just getting ready with smart new
rules?"
"Son, that's a good question. Sometimes folks just get it into their
head that they know best what the public needs and they don't seem to
want to listen no more."
Disclaimer: Any reference to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
Michael M. Roberts is vice president of Educom. [email protected]