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ANNOUNCE: Federal Trade Commission "ConsumerLine" (fwd)



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 08:48:41 -0500
>From: Richard Civille <rciville@CIVICNET.ORG>
To: Multiple recipients of list RURALDEV
     <RURALDEV%KSUVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu>
Subject: Federal Trade Commission "ConsumerLine"

ANNOUNCEMENT:

February 23, 1995

Introducing the Federal Trade Commission "ConsumerLine"

TO:  GOPHER SITE  MANAGERS, WEB MASTERS AND INTERESTED FOLKS

(Our apologies if you receive this notice several times from different
lists. We hope this announcement is appropriate for the lists submitted to.
 Please feel free to repost.)

Are you interested in pointing  your gopher or web site to a great new
resource for consumer education materials?  The Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) recently established the "ConsumerLine", a gopher server that offers
FULL TEXT of more than 140 consumer and business publications.

The FTC gopher server can  be accessed at:  CONSUMER.FTC.GOV 2416.  That
last number is a port address.

You also can use a Web browser such as Mosaic or Netscape.  The uniform
resource locator (URL) is:  GOPHER://CONSUMER.FTC.GOV:2416

Categories include:

                Credit -- Investments -- Health and Fitness --
                Telemarketing -- Homes and Real Estate --
                Products and Services -- Automobiles --
                Working at Home -- and more!

These publications are concise and informative.  This is "use-it-now"
information that anyone can immediately put to work.  The FTC has long made
this kind of consumer information available in brochures.  The FTC believes
that these brochures ought to be widely disseminated to the public over the
Internet, because a larger audience can be reached for these materials this
way, at little or no cost to the consumer.

*       The (FTC) is an independent agency with a mandate to protect the public
        against unfair, deceptive and fraudulent advertising and marketing
        practices.  The agency works to achieve its goals through law
        enforcement and education efforts.  FTC ConsumerLine is the latest
        addition to those efforts.

The Center for Civic Networking is assisting the FTC in developing this and
other information applications that can reach large consumer audiences over
the Internet.   If you are a Webmaster or managing a gopher site and you
choose to establish a pointer to the ConsumerLine, we are very eager to
hear from you.  This will help us understand what kinds of audiences these
consumer education materials are likely to reach.  Notifying us will help
us develop and improve outreach efforts like this one in the future.

We would be happy to help answer any questions you might have about the
ConsumerLine.  We very much invite your comments as well.  Your comments
will help the FTC and other agencies learn how to use the Internet to
disseminate information to the public.

Thank you very much for your interest.  We hope to hear from you soon.

Richard Civille
Executive Director
Center for Civic Networking
rciville@civicnet.org