Here's some information on using the Internet to fax messages. This
gives me a lot of ideas. First, there was some talk here about
encrypting FAXes. Since somebody is already getting the data on the
internet, this would be trivial for someone to do here with PGP.
Secondly, I don't know if they are using mail or FTP to transmit, but
if they converted it to mail we could have `anonymous faxes' by
coupling with the cypherpunk remailers (then to a receiver site that
supports the FAX service via email reception). Finally, it seems to me
that this is the first glimmer of a very massive new market opening up.
Maybe the first entrepreneurs in cyberspace will be developing this
service. Digital cash will be extremely useful here.
So far, no one has told them `no' (`is this legal?' he asks) but I'm
sure there's a lot of people that will be mighty upset by all this
stellar progress! The problem with services like these is that once
they become wildly successful and popular the weasels whine and clamp
down. Note the developers are also behind the Internet Radio.
Boy, when a universal network is built where commercial activity is not
considered some kind of shady taboo, our economy is going to just GO
CRAZY and EXPLODE. I'd like to set up a hypertext library with modest
transaction charges, and will do so once the opportunity is there (BTW,
also heard that Brewster Kahle, major mastermind between WAIS, has
formed his own company and is now marketing workstation `electronic
printing presses'.) All the elements are there. We're all dressed up
and ready to go, with no way to get there! Somebody go and kick your
legislator, and phone and cable company reps!
- ------- Forwarded message
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1993 07:04:57 -0800
From: farber@central.cis.upenn.edu (David Farber)
Subject: actually it is really an experiment and should be viewed as one but ..
From: the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow
Today's SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS Business Section had the following
front page story (From the New York Times - by John Markoff):
"USERS AVOID FAX COSTS WITH INTERNET MESSAGES"
The dividing line between paper facsimile documents
and electronic mail is vanishing.
Thanks to the volunteer efforts of a group of computer
network designers, the network of networks known as Internet now
permits users to send an e-mail message to be printed out on fax
machines at a growing number of sites around the world.
Because transmission charges on the Internet are minimal
compared with those of the long-distance phone calls normally
used for faxes, the system is a cheap way to send faxes across
the country or around the world.
To use the system, begun this month as an experiment in
remote printing, computer mail users include a fax telephone
number in the address portion of their message. The message,
which may include both text and graphics, will then be
automatically routed to a site that has agreed to serve a local
geographic ``cell'' for delivery of the fax message.
So far, participating regions include all of Japan,
Australia, the Netherlands and Ireland, and in the United States,
metropolitan Washington, Silicon Valley and parts of the San
Francisco Bay area, as well as other pockets of the country.
Leading the project is Marshall T. Rose, a computer
communications consultant at Dover Beach Consulting in Mountain
View, Calif. He has worked with another Internet researcher, Carl
Malamud, who has created Internet Talk Radio, a weekly commercial
audio program that is distributed internationally and can be
played on computer work stations.
The fax cell sites are computers on the Internet that are
also connected to inexpensive computer-controlled fax modems that
can route the files to virtually any fax machine.
Each site can designate the size of the area that it will
serve - whether an entire city or just the fax machines within a
particular company.
So far, in keeping with the utopianism that still permeates
Internet culture, none of the fax middlemen and -women are
charging for their services. Rose noted that the blurring of fax
and electronic mail would raise thorny questions.
``Is this global and local bypass of the telephone companies
using the Internet?'' he asked rhetorically. ``Is this legal? We
need to think about this.''
(Information on Internet Fax Bypass can be obtained by sending a
message to tpc-faq@town.hall.org).
------- End of Forwarded Message
