>>"Should a member system be permitted to charge a fee >>for access to information which is delivered to it at no charge?" > >I believe...yes. To a point. >It's kinda like America Online with the WWW. It's free to everyone but >AOL still charges people to get to it. >Also, Internet itself is built on the principle that it's supposed to >be free...but some places charge access fees. But what we are trying to have in this community is free access to its e-mail and newsgroups as supplied to us by Bates. Local people that use AOL are used to their fees, we are trying to entice those that have computers and do not (or cannot) afford the connection fees to these national firms. >I don't think it's unreasonable for a BBS to charge an access fee...as >long as: 1) It's not unreasonable ($8 a month is steep considering >eWorld charges close to that for e-mail, news, AND FTP! (AOL is $9)) >2) There's at least one place where someone knows they can go to get >at least free Internet e-mail. But Patrick, here is where we differ, who is going to determine what is 'reasonable'? My thoughts are that Bates does not charge us for getting these newgroups and e-mail access, so why should we, as sysops, charge any of our users for its access? I know LA Blues, PC-Forvm and EcoLink don't charge any users for any access to the e-mail or newsgroups, Dream Link charges for his newsgroups but not e-mail. Should a fee be necessary I would accept an increase in time allowed for its use, but primarily all community users should have free access to both for at least 15 minutes per day IMHO. Bob
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