From: frantz@netcom.com (Bill Frantz)
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 05:43:17 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: China
Message-ID: <199602120410.UAA15696@netcom7.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At  8:29 AM 2/11/96 -0500, Dr. Dimitri Vulis wrote:
>Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>
>> At 01:54 PM 2/10/96 EST, you wrote:
>> >It's not difficult to imagine that governments will seek to regulate the
>> >possession of modems again. Some may recall that in the U.S. it used to be
>> >technically illegal to connect a modem to the phone jack without a permissio
>> >from AT&T.
>>
>> Actually, permission from the local phone companies, who owned the system,
>> I assume?  (Though I don't actually remember which parts of The Phone Company
>> were involved in the Carterphone decision.)
>
>Nope.  I used modems back when the local phone company _was AT&T. :-)

Back in the really dark ages, we used acoustic couplers (300 b/s max) which
held a telephone handset, so there was no direct connection to the
telephone lines.  The phone company asserted that they were also illegal,
but their argument was kind of weak!