[12728] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: EFF and the big bad T (tax) word [long]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stanton McCandlish)
Fri May 27 08:55:33 1994
From: Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>
To: karl@mcs.com (Karl Denninger)
Date: Thu, 26 May 1994 18:00:35 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: don.wills@swc.com, djw@eff.org, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <m0q6VWU-000BbmC@mercury.mcs.com> from "Karl Denninger" at May 25, 94 09:50:18 pm
> > FYI, the reason books and other publications sometimes cost more for
> > libraries than for individuals is not even vaguely related to the issue at
> > hand. The reason is because they are copied and used by more people, and
> > the makers of them depend upon individual sales and royalties therefrom
> > for their income. This does not hold true of network resources (though it
> > often does hold true of networkable software, such as MS Word - thus the
> > existence of site licenses.) By contrast, a constantly connected data
> > line, like our T1 for instance, does not cost any more or less to use or
> > provide whether one person or 5 or 15 are using it.
> >
> > You are very wide of the mark here.
>
> The hell it doesn't.
>
> Let's say that each "user" has 128kbps of bandwidth available to them.
>
> If 15 of them "use" it at once, then there is NOT ENOUGH TO GO AROUND.
> Therefore, you must buy TWO T1s, which now certainly DOES cost you more
> money. Or, you can leave your customers twisting in the breeze with
You've missed the entire point. I did not say that one T1 line is
sufficient for an infinite number of users. Let's not be silly. I said
"a constantly connected data line, like our T1 for instance, does not cost
any more or less to use or provide whether one person or 5 or 15 are using
it."
In other words, it does not cost the telco any more to provide us a T1
line that is used by more than one person that it would to provide a T1
used by only one person. The telco does not lose any money it is
expecting. Contrast this with a book publisher. Only one person can read
a book at once, and most people have their own books. The publishing
industry depends on this, and is set up with that presumption as central.
When they sell to a library they may (especially in the case of
periodicals) often charge more than they would for a single user, because
they know that more that one person will be using it, and they probably
won't be buying their own copies.
Your entire diatribe has *nothing to do with the subject at hand*. Who
cares if a libarary would have to buy another line because they have too
many users? So maybe they'll have to have 2 copies of Webster's
collegiate dictionary too. It is completely and totally unrelated to the
issues of whether or not libraries will be or should be subsidized, and
what drives the telecom and information (or book) markets.
--
Stanton McCandlish * mech@eff.org * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist
"In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich
Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of
phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps.
When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it."
- Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", TIME, Mar. 14 1994
