At 08:27 PM 2/28/99 -0800, Michelle Dick wrote:
>Or rather they ask for something of value from you for free and hope
>that you think what they offer in return is of greater value.
>Assuming that it is is rather presumptuous on their part.
Not really. I bet the vast majority of the list managers do *not* get a
penny for their archives, and some probably even pay their ISPs to run the
archives. In your case, yes, you have very little incentive to let someone
else duplicate your content and thereby take money out of your pocket, but
I would bet you are the rare list owner who is making money on their archives.
I think this is an interesting point for Topica: they can engender even
more good will by offering to list owners to point their archive pointer to
your archive. Since you've already said no to them archiving, they're not
losing anything, and they are increasing the market for "archives that make
ad revenue". They might also consider giving you a split, but I think we're
too early in the ad game for that to happen (although I would love it if we
could...).
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium
