Re: ADMIN: payment options for list membership

["Higgins, Lisa" <LHiggins -at- CARRIERACCESS -dot- COM>]

I will gladly pay for list membership, and I would gladly tolerate outages
due to free service. Corporate (or STC) sponsorship makes me very nervous.

If I may sound shrill and alarmist for just a moment, the internet used to
be a wonderful thing--a many-to-many medium controlled by those who used it.
More and more, I see it becoming just another way to buy stuff. Cisco
recently announced that they have the technology to allow cable-based
internet services to slow down access to domains that compete with them or
their business partners. Universal Studios is suing people for deep-linking
to them. Network Systems is suing over spammer blacklists, claiming that
spamming is their right. If the STC is sponsoring the list, can we still
discuss them critically, or will there be a rule--unspoken or spoken--that
we don't bite the hand that feeds us? I guess it's been a bad week, but the
idea of letting a corporation sponsor the list gives me the screaming
heebie-jeebies.

I also don't care for the idea of making everyone pay. And I'm really not
sure why. I guess because I think we may lose a good part of the
demographic. There are people on the list who put a whole lot in and serve
as mentors, for the most part, and I don't want them to have to pay for the
privilege of helping others. I also don't want to lose the casual users or
the fence-sitters. A little apathy and perspective is a good thing. I'd be
happy to send a hundred bucks or so to cover the costs of those who can't or
won't pay. (Naturally, this would mean that there would have to be little
animated gifs of my head on every page and nobody could be mean to me
anymore, but I think that's probably going to happen, anyway.)

Now, I dunno how well this would work. If I understand correctly, there's an
ongoing need for bandwidth and a one-time need for equipment and software.
These costs could be covered by material or monetary donations, or some
combination thereof. Everybody send in your old 486s and we'll build a
Beowulf, OK? And I get the feeling that there are plenty of people who would
volunteer to help with administration of the list and website, as well, if
it's getting to be too much for Deb and Eric.

Blah. I need to go do work now.

Lisa.

PS: I don't do credit cards, and I'm not even Canadian! There go all your
wacky theories.

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