Alternative DNS systems and net neutrality - Was: Re: [governance] DNSsec and allternative DNS system

[Lee McKnight]

Meryem,

Sorry to continue my cleaning up of the historical record on this thread: but France Telecom did spend lots of time and money in the 1990s trying to promote the Minitel into Japan, the US, and other nations, even though folks like me were advising that it was a lost cause/not exportable.

In fact as late as mid-90s they dropped $50m - which in those days was real money - trying to bring the Minitel into the US...on the dates I am a little fuzzy I admit, but I remember that round number.

Also, the confiscatory nature of the diffusion process - ie they took away your phone books so you had to use the Minitel to find information - sounds like something the US DOD might dream of - well actually sounds like a move a state-owned telco monopoly would dream up ; )

Lee

Prof. Lee W. McKnight
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
+1-315-443-6891office
+1-315-278-4392 mobile
>>> marzouki at ras.eu.org 11/17/07 10:28 AM >>>
Veni, why do you think that being from a given country makes it  
compulsory for someone to approve and be proud of everything coming  
from this country?

This liminary note being made, the Minitel (which by the way was not  
created by the military) didn't make it on the world arena not  
because all services were in French (translations would have been  
easy), but for many other reasons, like that at that time France  
Telecom was a public monopoly, with no real interest in  
commercializing it worldwide. When circumstances changed, the Minitel  
and its models (technical, contractual, economic.. models) were  
entirely obsolete w.r.t. Internet developments, and specially web  
developments.

What's great about the minitel is that the device was distributed for  
free to all French telephone users (individuals, administration,  
businesses..), in the early 80s, and that made it widely used by the  
population, with many public and private services available, some for  
free, others with payment. The bad side of the story is that this  
situation has delayed a lot Internet developments in France, and  
specially its use by a large public: in the mid 90s, the minitel  
penetration rate was at its peak.

Meryem

Le 17 nov. 07 à 14:56, Veni Markovski a écrit :

> Hmmm... What was the system in France, which was created before the  
> WWW? Did it make it on the world arena, or it remained only in France?
>
> Let's be more precise. If it wasn't for the DoD to give it up to  
> the DoC, and then to ICANN, we would not be able to exchange these  
> emails today.
>
> veni
>
> At 14:40 11/17/2007  +0100, you wrote:
>
>> Le 17 nov. 07 * 13:13, Veni Markovski a *crit :
>>>
>>>  It is good to think about the way the Internet came to the current
>>> day, if it was created by the... let's say the Bulgarian Ministry
>>> of Defence. It would have still been used only by the Ministry of
>>> Defence within their main building in Sofia.
>>
>> I'm confident that, thanks to ISOC Bulgaria and public-private
>> partnership, this wouldn't have developed this way:)
>
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