Slashdot Mirror
End of the Free Internet
efedora writes: "The End of Free keeps a list of the various transitions to paid services from free net sites. The list is getting longer. When I think of an individual site that's really worthwhile I say to myself, "Sure, that site is worth $4.95 a month". The problem is there are going to be lots of sites at $$$ a month and it sure adds up." Of course even Slashdot is planning on rolling out subscriptions-for-no-banner-ads sometime soon, so I suppose we're not entirely immune to the subscription bug either.
I've said before that I wouldn't mind paying for a Slashdot subscription, but I have a few reasonable (in my opinion) requests that would probably have to be fulfilled if I were to pay around $60 a year (assuming ~ $5.00 for monthly access):
- You can keep Katz. I don't hate the guy as much as most people around here. He's not a moron, and he writes interesting articles. BUT, please ask Robert Cringely to write an article or two every month. I'm not sure if this would violate his contract with PBS, but he would be a nice addition to the Slashdot staff (perhaps he could even write an open-source/free software slanted column in addition to his PBS gig).
- No banner ads for subscribers, of course.
- Some "free" item every six or twelve months, perhaps. I'm talking small here, like a travel coffee mug of a relatively aesthetically-pleasing t-shirt with a slash and a dot on it.
- Ability for more customization than non-paying users. I'm thinking of some nifty themes, perhaps (everyone loves the apple./..org gfx, let's get some more good looking stuff). Also, subscribers should be able to moderate more often. I probably earn at least five karma points a day on my two accounts but haven't been able to moderate for MONTHS.
- Perhaps a general forum with a few different categories where subscribers can post questions, etc. I'm imagining an "Off-Topic" room, a "General hardware" room, and a "Software" room right now. Of course, this would all be OSS/FS-related chit chat for the most part (except for silly OT posts).
Eric Krout
It's been very evident over the past years just how mercenary the Internet has become. Many great services have been killed off because of lack of funds for bandwidth or server space, and existing sites remain because of the introduction of subscriptions for 'faster downloads' or 'no ads' - it's very sad. There's more ads than information, now. What I really can't stand though, is the popup shockwave ads that appear slap bang on the browser window you're reading, and you have to wait for the ad to finish before you can close it. I don't know if I'd pay for any sites - generally I just ignore the ads. But the queue times at fileplanet are really annoying. Still, there are the ftp servers, although finding files on them can be a bit of a task.
/. is one of the few sites I use regularly whose ad server is not redirected in my host file. I see them, and occasionally click on them in order to support financially (and indirectly - none of my money involved). I'd rather let some company's marketing budget support these sites than out of my own pocket.
My 0.02$ anyways.
It seems like the latest trend in 'net advertising is larger, flashier banner ads. When are the advertisers going to get the idea that THIS DOES NOT WORK! Pop-Ups, Pop-Unders, "Intersicials" (between page ads), Ads that make noise, Ads that flash and blink. It's all just detracting from the real message of th ad. Look at Google. Reports say that they may be profitable, and most of their revenue comes from... guess what... ads! But when do you see an ad on Google? No pop-ups, no banners, just "Sponsored Links". Non-intrusive and relevent to your search. Bigger banners don't get more clickthroughs. Learning what the user wants and targeting banners to them does (Yes, there are privacy concerns - but you don't have to track users to find out what they may be interested in.). The solution is to cut costs and make banners less annoying - and more informative. Instead of poorly done marketing, how about a simple link. Imagine this at the top of Slashdot: "P4 2.2, 1024mb DDR, 120gb HDD, 17" TFT, DVD-RW, Radeon 8500 - $1600 from X Computers". This is targeted. Most people wouldn't understand what this says - but I bet that 95% of the /. crowd would. Advertising is about getting the message accross to the righ people and giving people what they want. A P4 2.2 with a TFT and DVD-RW for $1600? Who wouldn't click? It's a good offer that makes you want to learn more. It's advertising that works.
Just like cable television, though its a payment plan I hate. I get 70+ channels with AT&T and only really watch eight or nine cable channels at most, not including local channels. So right now my money goes towards networks that I consider crap and worse pays networks that engage in hate speech like some right-wing political shows or some religious programming.
I would much rather see an affiliate program that lets me pick 4 or 5 websites on my own for the $5 a month and dynamincally change them as my tastes change. Lets say I get sick of slashdot in the middle of the month, then they get a prorated check and I can subscribe to something else.
The good thing is that there will always be some free amateur sites worthy of attention.
The bad thing is that bandwidth isn't free. When amateur sites are good, they get popular, and their bandwidth cost increases without bound.
The solution. It'd be nice if the bandwidth costs were paid by users. We already pay money to our ISPs. In an ideal world this money should pay for the bandwidth costs of the http requests that we send *and* the contents that we receive in return. Fan sites would no longer fear the bandwidth costs of the slashdot effect. They would only have to worry about the server not crashing. And for that we have prayers.
Let me see something:
Money Slashdot gets from readers under current system: $0
Money Slashdot gets from readers under proposed system: $0 (if, according to you, not a single person pays)
How is this a stupid idea?
*It does not cost Slashdot anything, and might bring in money.*
I would probably pay even though I currently block about 98% of the banners that Slashdot shows.
Why?
Because I get a lot out of Slashdot. I am willing to pay, or even donate, to a cause/service that is offered for free that I get something out of. I have disposable income, like most of Slashdot, and I am willing to give some of that up for things that I like (like Slashdot)
I have contributed monetarily to FSF, EFF, and CPSR, as well as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army.
I am not under the impression that I deserve everything for free, nor that these services can rely on others for support. I realize that Slashdot does have income from advertisements now, but I am willing to give up a few dollars to make sure that Slashdot continues even if this dries up (have you checked how much less people are paying for ads these days?)
I bought a Slashdot T-shirt from CopyLeft pre-Slashdot buyout in part to support Slashdot.
I think you are the one that needs to get in touch with reality.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
What these sites that want to charge for content fail to realize is that (as others have mentioned), it all adds up. I'm already appalled at my "communications bill" every month. $70 for DirectTV. $90 for telco/ADSL. $150 for two cellular phones. $99/yr for Tivo. Luckily, I don't have a pager, or that'd be another $7 a month.
We're getting nickle and dimed to death on all the stuff, and after a while, people are going to stop being willing and/or able to pay. *I'm* not paying $4.95 a month. And in SlashDots case, unless the ads suddenly start taking the whole screen, I don't even notice them. Some sites are in my firewall database so I never see the content anyway.
And incidently, how effective are these ads? It appears that ThinkGeek advertises a lot, but I never click through to them. I can probably count the number of ads I've clicked through on.
Now, for one time fees, like Opera, it's worth paying the $$$ to get rid of the ads. THOSE types of ads use screen space you can't get rid of, since it's integrated into the browser. For SlashDot type ads, they scroll right off the screen.
So does SD really think anyone will pay $4.95 for ad free, *other* than as a method to support the site (ie, they'd pay anyway, but this way they feel like they're getting something for their money?)
And speaking of nickles and dimes, anyone check their phone bill recently? New charge: Infra Structure Upgrade for disasters. Greaaat. And I'm not even done grousing about paying for 911 service on a line that I never (in fact, can't) make a voice call from.
--John (running out of nickles and dimes)
Is somebody testing the audience to see how would we react to a change of policy from slashdot?
It's just a BloJJ
Hey, I'm not from the USA. Thanks to a very effective market-monopoly by our largest Telco who has exclusive rights to the copper, there are less than 25,000 DSL subscribers in the whole of New Zealand.
And then, even if you are lucky enough to live in an area where DSL is available, you face the prospect of paying by the megabyte for data sent/received (including traffic generated by DOS attacks, spam etc).
But wait -- it gets worse!
This large telco also appears to have placed severe throttling on P2P traffic such that some people are reporting speeds as low as 1KB/S when using the cheapest DSL accounts.
You guys in the USA should think yourselves lucky!
Take a look over at arstechnica. They are trying some interesting things to keep the site free.
./ is happens to be discussion, but maybe there could be more... Anyway something to think about before just throwing up the ads while hoping readers can deal with them.
Basically what they have done is package some of their content and index it in a way that is worth some money each year.
The casual browser can still stop by and catch the news or discussion, but the interested user can subscribe and get nicely made PDF's of various articles and other things.
So much of what
I find it hard to believe that all the brains concentrated on this site a couple times a day that we cannot come up with something worth paying for.
Whadda think?
Blogging because I can...
Of course even Slashdot is planning on rolling out subscriptions-for-no-banner-ads sometime soon, so I suppose we're not entirely immune to the subscription bug either.
That's not the same thing, you're still offering the people who doesnt want to pay to freely use your site;
- people paying will a) feel good about themselves and b) help support slashdot
- people not paying can still access everything but will have to live with the ads and (possibly) support slashdot that way
It's a fair deal, someone's got to pay the bills.
Anataka suki desu. Itsumo. Itsumademo.
I don't see ads or empty boxes, even though I surf with graphics on. And I hardly ever see pop-ups or pop-unders, I'm not tracked all over the place by doubleclick and friends, etc. IOW, I use a filtering proxy server which strips all the useless crap out of the webpages I visit.
Every now and then I use someone else's computer and I just can't believe how awful the web has gotten. How can anyone stand it?
This website supposedly caters to geeks--that is, people who supposedly can control what comes in through their browsers.
How is this supposed to make money again?
Contrary to your belief that net is composed of well educated people who see pressure and are not subdued by it, you are wrong. Advertisements DO work, like spam, capturing small population slice.
This is unfortunate, and i think most major providers must attempt to block such nonsense.
I do not mind unobtrusive ads, like on google, that actually flow along with your query, and sometimes help find extra information!
I think barrier will be broken once ads will offer something to user in exchange for paying attention to it. Have you seen shoot, zap smash the monkey ads?(duh!) Well that ad provides entertainment for web user that surfs very rigid content.
Ad that offers something to the user, may catch attention of one , pass the threshold of filtering and annoyance ad dismissal, may bring magnitude large set of audience than otherwise large square pop up ads about sun and oracle bits they are willing to sell for a small fortune.
Ad must say, here is something free, that you might need, in return of taking it(enteratinment, info), learn about our product and maybe have a deal.
As for websites turning to subscription models, they have clearly have not grasped what the net, is. Perhaps they will capture some people who transalete from newspaper world into webworld, but those are not the futre of the net.
New media distribution models will be coming to lower the cost of distribution, such as multicast(I assume with IPv6, cuz one for IPv4 is dead). Once that is everywhere, one may be able to cast from garage to everyone in the world, and take exactly 1 times bandwiths, as unicasting to a buddy. Leveraging smart ways of technology is what internet is all about. Its about being able to take new stuff, maybe make your own and do one man show that will make drone megacorporations silly.
If you do that though, you might fall under many laws promoted by corporations into power, that attempt to raise barrier to market entry trying to cut out joes with super cool ideas that can embarrass their multimillion IT departments, with flick of a finger, few key strokes and some ingenuity.
Fuck isn't it whats all america was all about, not a pathetic piece of (s.h*i-t), manned by mighty dollar and interest for profit. Not even a human being! But I digress.
I think this is correct. Just like buying Cable or Sattelite TV you sign up for a 'package' of content.
/. it won't as we all assume the guys running it are well off already. No one will get rich through a voluntary support system.
/. show me mac ads, when I'm reading a book review link to the book on Amazon and get the (I think) 15% commission. There are genuine revenues to be earned out of these things - WITHOUT plastering the screen with monkeys to slap.
The other end of the spectrum are the new sites launching with a pay element from day one. These are of high value to the user, offering information on stock prices, access to a valuable network, or some other information. They will often replace a telephone or paper based service that was charged at a premium previously.
The pay does model work, even paying thousands a year, if the content is of genuine value to the consumer and hasn't been freely available in the past.
Paying to remove banner ads is simply not going to make anyone money - why? - I can better spend the money upgrading to DSL or buying coffee. I don't get anything new.
Paying to 'support' a site could work. But only if a large enough minority actually put in some money. For something like a cancer patient support site this will work, for
And as another poster points out - Google style ads are the way to go. When I read a mac story on
For example, slashdot would have a hard time going pay, but, say if all andover's websites went to a subscrption, costing $2/month for unlimited access for everhting
I think this is a good thing. It would require us to have a REAL revenue stream without having to rely on VC. People have to get used to the fact that someone needs to pay for the bills.
With Reptile we are going to integrate payment systems (paypal, merchant, etc) so that you can subscribe to content based on reputation..
This way you can subscibe to your favorite sites like slashdot or kuro5hin and and at the same time get access to a very high rated Salon article.
Of course a lot of this is still under development but we would love to get your help!
Slashdot is great for two things:
1 - Its user base.
2 - The plain fact that it's not slashdottable.
You've two choices: force users to pay, and most will leave, myself included, or make a real business out of your networks building and tuning skills.
My question now is: do you *really* need to ask for money from your users, or this is just the Bad Idea (squeeze money in any way you can without care for anything) from some typical narrow minded businessman?
One key is to charge people as indirectly as possible. Some other ideas:
pay for more bandwidth
micro ads (mentioned below)
personalization: xxx@slashdot.org email, rdf headlines sent to your pda.
pay for more functionality: message your friends. A more customizable moderation system: ignore the mods of your foes/ ignore "offtopic" mods, etc.
subtract free functionality but only for the hardcore users. I.e. best set up is if the average user didn't notice a big difference (no huge page filling iframes). Say the typical user could only post 15 comments a month. Then you'd have to pay {small amount} for unlimited postings. Note that by logging in as AC this still lets the po' folk post, but it's targetted at the hard core guys who are more likely to pay.
How these changes are done is often as important as what the changes are:
I think this would be a good "Ask Slashdot" topic. Seriously. Why not lay out the finances, what's needed and how soon, and then let's bandy about some ways to make a subscription site like this work. Why do it behind closed doors? You might find some pretty clever ideas from the user base. Aslo, I for one, would have great respect for any company that honestly dealt with its users and included them in the decision making process. Or at least made some gestures in this direction. It would bring you so much goodwill. And we know you gotta pay the bills (little taquitos might loom on horizon. Somebody has to feed Katz.). But instead of making us feel like we are being led by the nose to a more and more annoying site until we pay (i.e. the Salon approach) -- be upfront about what's needed and we'll help you make slashdot work.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Indeed. It already happens in other environments.
My wife occasionally manages to drag me out to a movie (or I go otherwise willingly on the rare occasion when there's one that seems worth going to). I tend to have her pay for the tickets to avoid the sinking feeling as the majority of a $20 bill disappears in to the vortex that is the box office (and we haven't even come near to the snack bar yet).
But what the heck. I eventually get a comfortable stadium-style seat in a nice theatre with a good screen and decent sound. I'm all set to watch the movie. And, of course, I might get a chance to see the trialer of another movie I'm looking forward to. Or I might have to suffer a string of Hollywood drivel and note what I may (or most likely) not rent if I'm really hard pressed for a movie at home. But what do I get?
20 minutes of commercials. Not movie trailers. Commercials. For soda. Cars. Washing detergent. You'd almost think I'm home watching television. Except I paid a premium price for the privilege.
well the problem might be that this is a gliding scale
/. started, it was unthinkable that there would ever be corporate involvement. i remember a lot of people complaining about slashdot being bought by andover (IIRC). i hear no-one about this anymore.
/. without ads. okay, it's an option, but the ads shouldn't become an annoyance then. it's been 1 banner max since the first time a banner showed up at /., and i think that's a Good Thing. the way things are now, prolly no-one will pay 5 bucks just to see that one banner add disappear.
/. is going to provide extra services for the paying customers, and extra banner ads for the non-paying visitors.
when
next they start asking fees to watch
let's hope it stays like this. a further step might be that some marketeer decides that the "paysite" is not bringing in enough money because the service hardly differs. in this (worst case) scenario,
let's hope this never happens and that i'm just too paranoid. still, i think a site that often stands for freedom and openness, shouldn't discriminate users on financial criteria. but that's just IMHO
For the record, I do pay attention to slashdot banner ads and have clicked on them before when I was interested in what was advertised. This is one of the few sites where I actually do click on ads because they don't go out of their way to annoy the fuck out of me by trying to:
;P
1. Popup
2. Popunder
3. Resize to full screen and hide all buttons
4. Spawn even more ads
5. Move around the screen so I can't click the close button
6. Eat up 90% of my system resourses and often crashing windows by using some shitty flash/java advertisement
7. Attempt to autoinstall spyware repeatedly
8. Play sound at the loudest posible volume and keep the distortion just low enough to where you can understand what is being said.
9. Follow my mouse around
10. Reset my homepage/searchpage
11. Flash bright, highcontrast colors and jitters.
Am I forgetting anything?
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Come on guys. Nothing is ever free. There is always a cost. Whether it's a financial cost, opportunity cost, or others, in the end, someone has to pay for it. We have to realize that the last couple of years has been a fluke in the whole economic cycle. There is no possible way that that cycle could have continued.
What I see is that (and it has already started happening in the last year or so) all these little web sites will be bought up by a conglomerate and mergered together. The economics of this is quite smart. I mean, it's not really economical for one small company to have a 10K server and a 1k/month internet connection. If 10 of these sites have been merged together, they would come to 1/10 (maybe a little more) of the original cost. Examples of this are seen here at Slashdot, eVite by Excite, and others.
Even then, these conglomerates will still not be able to afford to make a decent profit (I mean, that's what companies are there for..making money) So they might in the end look towards a pay for content plan. So it becomes, people will only pay for content that they care about or are interested in. Content that they read frequently. In the end, it becomes a choice for the consumers where demand sets the price.
Now for the point of this post. I would gladly pay $2-5 (approximately the price of a newstand magazine) for access to quality content. I would definitely pay that much for access to read articles and post on slashdot. In addition, this would be a great raise the quality of the content (ie posting).
Also, a number of people have posted about using ad-blocker programs. In the end, those programs are only hurting yourself and everyone else on the internet. Company need the small amount of money coming from these advertisers to barely stay afloat. These programs only go to convince the advertisers to pay significantly less for the ads because less and less people are viewing the ads. Think about it this way, would advertisers pay millions of dollars to advertise during the Super Bowl if they found out that there was a technology that a good population of TV watchers are using to block the super bowl ads?
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Rubbish. It costs them tons to do the subscription system. They will actually have to respond to the concerns of paying members, they will actually have to get billing right, they will actually have to listen to bug reports and, well basically, actually have to start acting like professionals and deferring to same. Also, they might actually start making money which would certainly whet VA's appetite.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
Why go to a website if you're only reading their content and using up their bandwidth and server if you are not willing to pay for it even indirectly? This is quite like going into a magazine store to read the magazines but not buying it. It is not illegal per se. But it is also hurting the service that you use.
Once these companies go bankrupt, AOL/TW will buy up all content services and put it only accessible within their framework. What would your WebWasher do for you then? Would you be more willing to pay a couple dollars a month for the service now or 21.95 for an AOL/TW account?
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Personally, I just add everything to the /etc/hosts...
127.0.0.1 fastmoney.net
The only problem is the error msg keeps popping up saying it couldn't connect to fastmoney.net
starz
On a positive note, I have actually clicked on relevant banners (not that most sites have them) and more importantly, I have clicked on text links to advertisers. Without relevant (to the website) ads, I never would have found Small Dog Electronics, RamJet, and even CD Now. All of which I have plunked down a large chunk of change at, as well as some other sites. Problem most websites have is that they don't use targeted ads, or they just have a banner that is for a site, instead of like MacInTouch and MacNN that have text links announcing deals for those web sites surfers when they click the links (which I have received some great deals by doing so).
I have banner images turned off in OmniWeb, manly because banner ads are typically junk, but I like relevant text links, or text ad boxes, because advertising works (and I want it to work) when advertisers do a good job. Text links require better targeting, and are more likely to be clicked.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
Run a webserver on your local machine.
Problem solved.
I would say that if a website moved to an exclusive pay for content model and if it were shown that a signifigant amount of people were willing to pay for this model then it would become more likely for the content site to be bought up by a big isp like aol /time warner, much like a popular tv show would have its rights bought up and offered exclusively to aol/time warner's customers as a draw.
I wonder if this sort of thing happens with porn website's ?They have been offering paid subscription services for years. Do small porn sites that are successfull get bought out and merged into the big central porn networks ?Or do they stay independent?
When media content becomes pay for use it begins to fall under the same economic rules as tv and magazines, i.e it tend's to be bought up by a couple of big players and thoese players useually have there own agenda and this agenda more often than not when it comes to journalism can influences the tone and way news is presented.
_________________________________________________
AvantGo is weeding out what they call "Custom channel abuse". Basically its 8 or more people creating a custom channel to a site that doesn't pay up for a licence. See the Register article here and the AvantGo announcement here.
This means that things like Slashdots own palm friendly version and my AvantSlash (along with thousands of other non-profit making sites who provide an ability to view their content for free) are going to be left a little out in the cold.
I've been recommended Plucker for the Palm and Mazingo for the PPC - not tried either though.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
The problem with what you propose is that it assumes that the only ones willing to pay for mod points are the ones who should have them. I tend to think that the exact opposite is true.
"Those who desire power the most often deserve it least." It's an old cliche, but it's only stuck around because it holds true so often. Slashdot attempts to work as a meritocracy, and even if it isn't entirely successful, that doesn't mean the ideal should be abandoned. The ability to buy mod points just invites abuse, and the ones who would suffer are the casual readers, wanting to read a good cross-section of opinions at their threshold.
You know, I actually kind of like those ThinkGeek ads common at the top of Slashdot. Sometimes I even click on them to learn more about the product. ThinkGeek has some really innovative ads.
([x] feet up, in freezing temperatures with wind... and rain. Hey, can I get a light? Sure can. ThinkGeek Delta Shockproof lighters!)
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
And set the 404 error to be a redirect to a transparent gif.
This works great for me.
Of course, I still see the slashdot ads, because they're served from the same server as the other images, but most sites use separate ad servers.
A simple business model for this:
Or, why this doesn't have to be like cable.
It would really be an inexpensive business to get into, and would only require a great deal of time and editorial restraint.
Here is an example.
You find 100 websites, each with high quality content that would be of interest to the group of people you're targeting.
You build a subscription base. Look for a target audience that would really be interested in the sites you're contracted with.
You charge $3.50 a month (something that's not too unreasonable). You take $.50 a month from that for your self. Your subscription base is 10,000 people, giving you $5,000 monthly operating revenue. Allot yourself $2,000 for bandwidth/financial services, and you have a nice bit of income.
You employ some sort of counter system on each of your member sites that reports in real time to your server. The remaining $30,000 in fees are divided on a percentage bases among those websites. Granted, the smaller (less visited sites) would receive a small revenue, it's still more then they likely get now.
There are a few issues with this that would have to be worked out, including marketing, preventing cheating with member sites.. but it's something that could work (and be profitable) even on a small scale.
The advantage of this model is that it allows smaller websites to make a profit, it encourages and keeps alive independent content of value, it helps filter out a lot of the noise (and there is a lot of it on the Internet), and most importantly allows editorial decisions to be made with an emphasis on pleasing the end user, instead of advertisers.
If there is anyone out there with a bit of startup capital that would actually be interested in hearing the details, I wouldn't mind chatting via e-mail. pathighgate@hotmail.com
The Internet is generally stupid
/. works by linking to other sites, and whilst paying $2/mo for /. isn't the worst thing in the world, i'd soon find i couldn't read half the stories.
Forget the ny times and it's free registration problems - we'd have to pay out for another subscription for every other link!
Rather than setup a subscription fee, why not setup some way to donate. Paypal or other service possibly? Every few months I would probably rifle off a donation for the info on slashdot. I am much more likely to give money via donation than I would if I was "required" to pay for some subscription.
As soon as some company decides how much their service is worth, I get disinterested. I hate when services think that they can dictate their worth to me. If you setup a donation option, I will pay what I think the service is worth. Slashdot would definitely get a few dollars from me. However, if it goes to mandatory subscription service, Ill probably just watch TV instead.
Presumably if you're willing to pay for the site you're a semi-serious contributor and not somebody posting reams of crap. So an extra +1 posting bonus might be justified. Maybe only if your karma is above a base threshold (to avoid letting losers pay their way to higher-rated posts).
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
That is correct. Some are paid already. Consider... suppose you are a small telephone company. You wish to carry internet content so that you can support the ISP's that conntect through you and also you wish to deploy your own ADSL service as well as dial up network. Now - there is just no way any ISP's are going to be interested in buying those OCx services without content... right? So you organise a connection to the backbones through POP's.
Why would a backbone operator offer such a connection for free? Answer: they won't - as a small telephone company you get to pay these people for the bandwidth required to connect through those pop's. As your company grows and you start to carry more and more content you might find a smaller fish in the pond will ask to connect to you and you get to bill them.
Ok, generally speaking all the ISP's fall into the smaller fish category so they all in general pay their upstreams megabux per month for the content that comes into their systems. In order to minimise this all the ISP's will in general operating farms of caching proxies.
Now - suppose someone happens to operate a small webserver farm. Since they don't have much stroke they fall into the smaller fish category and they will be billed by whoever they connect through. Suppose this connection is through an ISP. Typically the ISP involved would not run this content through the caching proxies because doing this would reduce the traffic and thus reduce their billing to this small webserver farm... right?
Well of course other accesses outside of the local pool of websurfers that frequent this website will end up running through the caches - but that isn't the point. The point is that in this model - the ISP that provided the uplink will Bill on the basis of the bandwidth and will not run it through the cache.
Now suppose the little web server farm operator decides that a co-locate is in order. So they call some people who offer this service and who are located closer to a backbone. Well - now the feed into the ISP that was the former uplink no longer exists. Suddenly the same content that the ISP was charging for ends up comming from a source that the ISP must pay for.
So, in this one little switch from running your own servers to comming through a hosting service the identintial content ends up being distributed at a cost to the ISP instead of it being a revenue source to them. In a fair business model one would expect that if the ISP were willing to pay their uplink for content that they would be willing to pay ANY content source on a somewhat fair payscale. This is like a supermarket telling a chicken farmer that if the chicken farmer is big enough to handle all of their egg and milk supplies and of course if this same chicken farmer has managed to get a stranglehold on the distribution channels - that they will pay for the eggs. Otherwise they expect to bill the chicken farmer for the eggs because they are providing a service distributing his eggs to their customers!!! Of course the chicken farmer can attempt to set up accounts with those egg eaters if he can find them and if he can figure out how to make them pay!!!
Ok... one more step here... Suppose the web server operator calls up his local telephone company and asks them to be the uplink. In this case he will be quoted a connection rate. The telephone company - being a bigger fish wnats the smaller fish to pay. So the guy decides, Nope - We're going to use a hosting service.
Well - now the content will be comming from a channel controlled by a fish even bigger than the telephone company so AGAIN the telephone company will find itself in the situation of paying for the distribution of the content instead of being able to bill for it.
In all cases - the idea of a level playing feild and fair market practices have been abandoned in favour of the idea that big fish can force smaller fish to pay - so they do so. I would suggest that this is not within the current fair trade practices legislation of most nations but I will also suggest that it will take an organisation and a class action lawsuit to change this.
Now, suppose that the webserver's uplink remitted money to the server operator based on the amount of content these server feed into the net. Since in general all ISP's are already paying their uplinks for the delivery of content it would only seem reasonable that they should pay ANYONE who supplies content regardless how big a fish they are. In fact this is how the commodities markets work. It is a well established fact that if you sell 100 dozen eggs that you will recieve a cheque about 10 times bigger than the farmer that supplies 10 dozen eggs.
Well... if the webserver were actually receiving money for the service they provide to the telecommunications carriers - that is if they were paid for creating content for these guys to ship to their customer base, then one would expect that there might be a bit of screaming going on about whether the people (ISP's) who do NOT own any copyright to the material have a legal right to duplicate it in their caching proxies.
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I made this argument to a systems admin who runs caching proxies. His retort was that without caching proxies webservers would be hard pressed to handle the demand from the surfers in cyberspace. Well, I do agree. It isn't a question of caching - its a question of the compensation and who gets the cash so to speak.
But here is a direct analogy. Somebody makes a sitcom for prime time TV. These people are in the same situation as the websurfers. They do not own enough equipment to be able to fully distribute the signal to all the customers of the networks and cable TV operators.
Just like in the case of TV, a cable TV operator will simply connect and pick up and distribute other people's copyrighted material and they do this so that they can bill their customers for cable TV services.
But now - the customer can choose to watch a sitcom or to use his time to surf the net. In both cases copyrighted materials are being fed into this person's electronic communications equipment.
In the case of a TV signal, the cable operator pays a sum of money into a pool which is allocated back to the producers of the TV show. But if the end user decides to surf instead, then no money is paid back to the producers of the web content and furthermore the intellectual property rights of the owners of this material are totally ignored.
To conclude, I would suggest that people stand way back and think about how for instance streaming video content supplied via TCP/IP as really any different to an end user than an NTSC signal that comes over the same wire. Does anyone think the general public knows the difference or even cares? No - surfers just want good interesting content and this is why they pay for the cable TV channels and pay for the cable modems or xDSL services or dial up lines for that matter.
Furthermore, as far as they are conserned - once they have paid for the connection they expect to get a bundled service that includes both a connection as well as content on this connection.
People in general understand there are pay TV channels just as they understand there are pay websites. What they don't understand is the distinction that the producers of TV content get paid while the producers of web content do not.
Frankly, I have trouble understanding this distinction too!