As their name implies, their primary function is as a place to post messages and read messages posted by others. Whatever the user's interests, there is probably a BBS to cat er to it. However, like any communications forum, this can raise some serious First Amendment concerns over some of the potential uses, such as availability of pornographic material, defamation, etc. Another use for bulletin board systems is the sending of electronic mail, or E-Mail, as it is commonly called. Electronic mail is a message that is sent from one computer user to another, occurring either between users on the same computer, or between users on different computers connected together in a network.
Electronic mail is different from regular mail in three important ways.
This gives rise to the second issue - privacy. This may consist of text, software, pictures, or even sounds. Since Teletext is only a one-way service, a user can only read the information the service has available for his or her reading. There is no way for the user to contribute his or her own input to the system. C. Information Distribution Systems Computers are used frequently for distributing information of various types.