"presses." They are not magazines, or libraries, or
phones, or CB radios, or traditional cork bulletin boards down at the
local laundry, though they have some passing resemblance to those
earlier media. Boards are a new medium--they may even be a LARGE
NUMBER of new media.

Consider these unique characteristics: boards are cheap, yet they can
have a national, even global reach. Boards can be contacted from
anywhere in the global telephone network, at NO COST to the person
running the board--the caller pays the phone bill, and if the caller is
local, the call is free. Boards do not involve an editorial elite
addressing a mass audience. The "sysop" of a board is not an exclusive
publisher or writer--he is managing an electronic salon, where
individuals can address the general public, play the part of the
general public, and also exchange private mail with other individuals.
And the "conversation" on boards, though fluid, rapid, and highly
interactive, is not spoken, but written. It is also relatively
anonymous, sometimes completely so.

And because boards are cheap and ubiquitous, regulations and licensing
requirements would likely be practically unenforceable. It would
almost be easier to "regulate," "inspect," and "license" the content of
private mail--probably more so, since the mail system is operated by
the federal government. Boards are run by individuals, independently,
entirely at their own whim.

For the sysop, the cost of operation is not the primary limiting
factor. Once the investment in a computer and modem has been made, the
only steady cost is the charge for maintaining a phone line (or several
phone lines). The primary limits for sysops are time and energy.
Boards require upkeep. New users are generally "validated"--they must
be issued individual passwords, and called at home by voice-phone, so
that their identity can be verified. Obnoxious users, who exist in
plenty, must be chided or purged. Proliferating messages must be
deleted when they grow old, so that the capacity of the system is not
overwhelmed. And software programs (if such things are kept on the
board) must be examined for possible computer viruses. If there is a
financial charge to use the board (increasingly common, especially in
larger and fancier systems) then accounts must be kept, and users must
be billed. And if the board crashes--a very common occurrence--then
repairs must be made.

Boards can be distinguished