Updated:Ã'Tue,Ã'JunÃ'26Ã'10:48Ã'AMÃ'EDTby David Hakala, Sm@rt Partner
Fee-based services will clear the clutter.
Back in 1987, a guy named Terry explained to me how his Fidonet bulletin-board system (BBS) worked. Fidonet, as we old-timers know, is an e-mail network that was popular before Internet access became widely available. Modem users dialed in to a Fidonet BBS, usually via free local calls, and exchanged e-mail that the BBS operator paid to relay over long-distance lines to other Fidonet systems around the world.
Terry was justifiably proud of his BBS, a vital, thriving community service that he had built from scratch. It had helped me and thousands of others get online for free. But he confessed that he would soon have to shut it down.
"It's costing me $500 a month in long-distance charges," he explained. I knew he only earned $18,000 a year.
"Are you "expletive" nuts?!" I screamed. "Charge the users $5 a month for it!"
Terry said it didn't work that way. He took me to a regional meeting of BBS operators so I could see firsthand the "information wants to be free" ethos. I gave them a little Economics 101 lecture, and was nearly lynched for my trouble.
But eight years later, one of those BBS operators came to my office to thank me.
He said, "I knew I had to start charging or lose my dream child. Your speech gave me the courage to do what I had to do." Then he added proudly, "Today [in 1995], I'm making $6,000 a month profit. I can afford to serve a lot more people, and the people who pay me are a nicer crowd than the freeloaders were!"
Fast-forward to today. How many worthy dreams have been dashed because dreamers lacked the courage to demand their rightful due? How much dreck has been put online because it cost nothing to inflict it upon the whole world? How much longer will it be before the dot-com generation learns what actor/comedian Danny Thomas told his daughter two decades ago:
"If it's worth doing, someone will pay you to do it. Otherwise, find something more useful to do."
Rumor has it that Yahoo's auction site lost 90 percent of its listings when the company started charging sellers for listings. That's good. Now I can find a quality pool cue there without wading through cords of firewood with Budweiser logos stamped on them.
Both of Denver's daily newspapers still run free Web editions. That's bad. After five years of operation, both Web editions are still bug-ridden travesties, and I only click on their annoying popup ads to tell the advertisers that I will never buy from vendors who use such obnoxious tactics. I'd gladly pay the print subscription price to get only news, without ads or the hassle of paper disposal. But that's not an option.
Some cyber-libertarians fear that fee-based Web services will create a new kind of "digital divide," separating society into those who can afford information and those who can't. First, if you can't or won't pay for information, I seriously doubt that you're willing or able to use it effectively. Second, there will always be people who care enough about sharing their information to pay for its publication (see Thomas, above). Third, whoever said life has to be "fair"? Finally, who says it's fair to hitch a free ride?
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