Re: Indexing whitepaper from Bright Path
--- Chuck Martin <cm -at- writeforyou -dot- com> wrote:
One last thought: a fundamental premise of the web
itself is the sharing of information.
Things have changed a lot. Plus, the web has evolved far beyond uniquely Academic content. Someone has to pay for all the bandwidth. Or are we to believe that Oklahoma State should be forced to host TECHWR-L for free again? The web NEVER was free. The tab for the lucky few who were using it at the time was just picked up by someone else (Universities, Research Labs, the military).
Costs and who pays them aside, I think the "fundamental premise" that such complaining seems to overlook is the sharing part. If TravelthePath is going to share the whitepaper with you, what are you going to share with them? If you don't think that their deal is appropriate, nobody is forcing you to share with them nor them with you.
Well, plenty of companies (and individuals) do share, at no cost to the sharees. In return, they get what some might classify as intangibles: exposure, name recognition, etc.
You use TECHWR-L as an example of what's not free, yet you in some ways prove my point: the TECHWR-L site itself is free to anyone who wants to use it. The articles and resources there are open to anyone, and the cost is picked up (at least in part) by site sponsors.
To use another example (one that I've been involved with, to be clear about relationships), the winwriters.com site offers articles for free, articles about tools and technologies. Of course, they want the exposure for their consulting and conferences. But the information that's provided isn't one-off.
It's interesting to see the contrasts in how companies decide to share information. It's notable in newspaper sites. The New Your Times, for example, requires registration. The San Jose Mercury News recently began requiring registration for any articles older than the current day. The San Francisco Chronicle is entirely free of registration requirements (and, I recently read, profitable).
So while it does indeed cost to produce and provide information, its distribution can indeed be free to the customer. But just because money is not asked for does not mean that it is "free." (To some, information is more valuable that money anyway.) That's my bigger issue: not that the information isn't free, but that it isn't and yet is labeled as free. (That and the utter lack of a clear privacy policy.)
--
--
Chuck Martin
User Assistance & Experience Engineer
twriter "at" sonic "dot" net www.writeforyou.com
"I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. The day may come when the courage of Men fail, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day! This day, we fight!"
- Aragorn
"All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given you."
- Gandalf
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