ClariNet

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  ClariNet Communications Corp set out in 1989 to sell newspapers over the internet at a time when selling almost anything over the internet was effectively forbidden. The network's Acceptable Use Policy barred overtly commercial traffic, and the for-profit announcement that June drew real alarm. Some people feared a for-profit news service would destroy the non-profit culture of the network. So how did a company founded in Waterloo, Ontario by Brad Templeton talk its way past that wall? And how did the same company end up arguing free speech before the highest court in the United States, while also handing science fiction readers the first taste of an all-you-can-read eBook library?

• 2. Past The Acceptable Use Policy

  ›

  In the late 1980s the internet in the United States was a patchwork of regional hubs stitched together by the NSFNet. That backbone came with rules, and overtly commercial traffic was not allowed under the Acceptable Use Policy. Brad Templeton's path around the barrier was not a workaround in code but an argument made to a person. He reports convincing Stephen Wolff, the director of NSFNet, that a news service sold to universities and research labs for use in research and education would not violate the policy, even though it was a for-profit effort. The reframing mattered because the buyers were the very institutions the network existed to serve. Stanford University became the first subscribing customer. That single sale established a model for who would pay, and the next chapter shows what they were paying to receive.

• 3. What Subscribers Received

  ›

  ClariNet delivered traditional newspaper and magazine material using Usenet newsgroup technology, but as a proprietary newsgroup hierarchy separate from the Big 8 hierarchies. News reached subscribers over the internet using NNTP, and also using UUCP. The early lineup drew on UPI and Newsbytes along with other typical newspaper wire sources. Material from newspaper syndicates rounded out the offering, including the Dave Barry column and the first internet based comic strips, among them Dilbert. The 'Street Price Report' showed how far the service reached beyond ordinary news. It published a database of advertised prices for computer products in magazines, predating the comparison shopping websites that would later become familiar. In 1994 the wire mix changed when ClariNet switched from UPI to the Associated Press and Reuters. New services arrived alongside that shift, including the Commerce Business Daily, PR Newswire, and Business Wire.

• 4. Scale Of A Dot-Com

  ›

  ClariNet has some claim to being the earliest company created to use the internet as a business platform, the kind commonly known as a dot-com company. By 1996 it sat at the top of the Inc. Magazine 500 as the highest ranked dot-com on that list. The company sold site-wide subscriptions, a structure that fit its institutional buyers. When Individual, Inc. acquired ClariNet in 1997, the company reported 1.5 million paying subscribers. Those subscriber numbers describe a business that had grown well past its contested 1989 debut, and its reach soon carried it into a courtroom.

• 5. Before The Supreme Court

  ›

  ClariNet became a plaintiff and appellant in the United States Supreme Court case Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union. The company's CEO testified that the Communications Decency Act created a chilling effect for online publishers. The argument framed the law as a direct threat to people who published over the internet, a category ClariNet had helped invent. The appellants prevailed by a vote of 9-0, and the decency sections of the act were struck down. That unanimous outcome left online publishers with a freer hand, and ClariNet had already been experimenting with what to publish next.

• 6. The Library Of Tomorrow

  ›

  In 1992 ClariNet announced a subscription book service for science fiction readers, an "all you can read" offering it called the "Library of Tomorrow." The following year it turned that idea toward an award. In 1993, working with the Science Fiction Hugo Awards, ClariNet published an eBook anthology gathering all the nominees for the 1993 Hugo Award. The collection was presented at the 51st World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco, and it also contained every Nebula Award short fiction nominee for that year. With 5 full novels, most still available only in hardcover, ClariNet claimed it was the largest anthology or eBook of current fiction published under one cover. The anthology featured a hypertext version of A Fire Upon the Deep, the to-be-Hugo-winning novel by Vernor Vinge. Readers could download it over the internet or read it on CD-ROM. It was made available to voters in the Hugo awards so they could read the works in time to vote on them. The publication of such a "Hugo Packet" became a common practice in later years.