"You Free-Net hopper, you!" castigated 
Hacker Barry. I suppose he
was right. I *had* been accumulating a certain number of accounts
since joining the on-line world. But how could I turn down the
earnest entreaties of a proliferating number of Free-Nets to apply
for an account and come back often to visit, all for free?
Until very recently, when an Internet provider came to my area, my geographical location had seemed to preclude anything but a long-distance connection to the cyberspatial realm. I had gotten an account on the mother of all Free-Nets, Cleveland, when I first became aware of its existence, but had only given it a couple of brief calls because the sole way I knew how to reach it involved long-distance charges.
By late summer of 1993, I learned that Washington, D.C., had a Free-Net-like system, CapAccess. While this would still be a toll call from where I lived, at least I'd be able to use it when I visited D.C. When, at just about the same time, the reference librarian at the local college made Gopher available on one of the terminals in the library, I was thrilled. This would mean I would be able to gopher to my freenet account. The initial understated sign that was put up beside this terminal advertised that it was possible to use it to connect to the Library of Congress and "other systems." To my dismay, a few days later, a new sign appeared on the terminal saying "Internet Access." While this was wonderful for the students and faculty, I could visualize my newfound access quickly vanishing, as I imagined the hordes of people that would soon be waiting in line wanting a bit of Internet. Since I had no actual affiliation with the college, I felt I would only be able to use the terminal when no one else was waiting - and surely that would be virtually never.
At just about this time, I noticed a message on a forum at CapAccess from a fellow in Hawaii who mentioned that he was connecting there via Melvyl, the University of California Library Catalog. This surprised me, as I had access to Melvyl via a library number but had no idea that it provided one with access to the Internet. It had appeared to me that everything below a certain point in the Melvyl menu required an account and a password, so I had never bothered exploring it very thoroughly. But sure enough, it turned out that one could connect both to the Cleveland Free-Net as well as to a couple of different gophers right from Melvyl. It just seemed too good to be true. But it worked. It was convoluted and there seemed to be no way to get control keys to work, but suddenly, here was Internet access right from my rural enclave - with nary a toll.
Incidentally, it was through the same forum that I had met Hacker Barry. He regularly stopped by Cap while on what he referred to as an "Internet biking tour" of Europe. His tour included visits to a number of Eastern European universities where he assisted in getting their Internet connections up and working.
By the summer of 1994, the Internet terminal in the library remained remarkably little utilized. I met one of the people who was taking advantage of it - someone who was taking a course at the college, in large part just so he would be able to have an Internet account. He was one of just a handful of students at the college that were aware of the availability of such accounts. Though he could access by modem, he would also occasionally use the library computer. He was a bit surprised that I was able to read my mail there, as I was neither student nor faculty. I told him that I had an account at CapAccess and suggested that he might like to get one there as well. The notion that he could use his college account to telnet to other accounts had not occurred to him. Within a few days he was a registered user on CapAccess and was quite happy to be able to "go" to a place from that rather impersonal $ prompt that greeted him when he connected to his regular account.
You just never know what you're going to run into on the various systems. On several of them, the command "go go" will unearth a list of all the possible "go" commands on that system. Yet, if you try that same command on one particular system, you'll end up at an area devoted to the game of "Go." Though many of them use the same Freeport software which was developed at Case Western Reserve University, each one modifies the menus to provide the particular kinds of information that the individual freenet has decided it wants to make available. In large part, what is offered depends upon the volunteers who step forward with suggestions for what they would like to see and who are then willing to help maintain the information in the given area.
While my friend from the college library is interested in the community information and local discussion groups that are available on a system such as CapAccess, many other people initially use such systems primarily for email and access to the parts of the Internet that the particular system chooses to make available. Some provide a large portion of Usenet groups, others just a handful and still others none at all. This potential for Usenet access is currently a bone of contention in Toronto. There, the public libraries were originally planning to provide terminals through which patrons could access the newly opened Toronto Free-Net. However this plan has been put on hold because the library does not wish to be providing access to certain of the newsgroups that the Free-Net is making available. (Regarding newsgroups, though rec.railroads recently appeared in the top 10 list of the most frequently accessed groups on the Cleveland Free-Net, that was likely not one of the ones of concern to the Toronto libraries. ;) )
A good many people who get their first introduction to the Internet through a freenet-type system end up getting accounts with commercial providers which give far more reliable and fuller service, and don't have a one hour at a time access limit. They can then go back and visit the freenet via telnet without having to suffer through dozens or even hundreds of tries to get on by modem. Even then, they may be greeted with a "Come Back Later, The System is Too Busy" message. (After learning through alt.internet.services that a nearby provider was soon going to install some lines which would be a local call for me, I signed up for an account the very day those lines went in.)
Despite there being freenets or organizing committees for them in over 40 states and in several countries, the traditional media in the U.S. have paid surprisingly little attention to this corner of cyberspace. Even some books on the Internet neglect to so much as mention freenets, while many of those that do, only make reference to the original freenet in Cleveland. It's a bit different in Canada, where the National Capital Freenet in Ottawa (NCF) received deserved attention in a MacLean's cover story on the "Wired World" earlier in the year. As it happens, NCF, though only a couple of years old, would likely be named the best of all freenets because it is well-run, innovative and very responsive to its users. It succeeds because it has a very dedicated volunteer base and an exceptional sysadmin.
An increasing number of freenets are requiring a small initial registration fee, either from everyone or from people outside the local area. They are doing this both to raise some needed revenue and to cut back on the number of people who register for accounts but never bother to make any use of them. While most freenets provide an account with a logon ID on the order of: ak143, some of the newer systems are offering a personalized logon for a one-time fee ranging between $15 and $100.
What languages are being used on these systems? Some of the non- North American freenets, including the first German one in Erlangen, are bi-lingual, while the one in the Netherlands uses only Dutch. Some of the Canadian ones are making great efforts to serve the francophone community, in addition to the anglophone majority. And though English is the language you are most likely to encounter on freenets, you just never know when you might see the odd post in Esperanto or Maltese!
And who is using these systems? Anybody, and everybody, from children to grandparents, of varying educational levels. I am often surprised to find that some of the people using the various freenets that I initially assumed to be in the typical 23-27 year old age group, turn out to be parents of children in grad school or grandparents. Others turn out to be high-schoolers. And you can just never tell what unexpected acquaintances you may chance to make. In my whole life, I had never run into a person who was both blind and deaf, but this is just what happened the other evening when I paid a visit to the Denver Free-Net, a most unforgettable experience for me. And though there seem to be more female users of freenet systems than one is likely to run into elsewhere on the Internet, they still seem to be quite under-represented.
If you have WWW access, a good way to have a look at what's available in the freenet world is to make a connection to the Home Page for Free-Nets maintained by Peter Scott at the University of Saskatchewan. If you don't have WWW access, you can try telnetting to one of the other addresses.
Access:
WWW - Home Page for Free-Nets: http://www.usask.ca/~scottp/free.html
National Public Telecomputing Network Telnet nptn.org Login: visitor
National Capital Freenet, Ottawa, Ontario Telnet freenet.carleton.ca Login: guest
CapAccess, Washington, D.C. Telnet capaccess.org Login: guest Password: visitor
Kathy Bilton 1994 kathy at the domain fred.net
Connect to the Matrix Website right here.
