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Re: Very well put ... but ...
Posted By: Claude ErreraDate: 3/29/02 6:13 a.m.

In Response To: Re: Very well put ... but ... (Tycho)

: He is not selling the content..in fact he's not selling anything..if this
: was for profit, he'd ask for a lot more money...you DO have to take it in
: good faith that he just needs to money to foot the hosting bill, so that
: is entirely up to you to believe or not. The money is there for the
: service to exist..the service being archival and distribution purposes of
: otherwise free stuff. All of us creating stuff inspired by Bungie's
: intellectual property are quite aware of the ramification of selling this
: stuff for profit..it would be wrong.

: So in short..he's not charging for the material on the site..he's charging to
: keep the service of having access to the material on the site alive.

This is a distinction lost on many, actually.

(And, in fact, it's irrelevant, in the long run - if it costs you money to get at the files, no matter WHAT that money is actually for, the files aren't free. And you can't use the argument that "I pay for my internet connection, so in effect, I'm ALREADY paying for access" - because that internet connection gives you access to many more things than Fileball, while a Fileball subscription gives you access only to... Fileball.)

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that what Fm is doing is wrong. From where I sit, he had exactly 2 choices:

  • Charge for access
  • Close the site down
(As someone has already said, banners aren't really an option when attempting to cover costs like this site incurs; donations didn't work - in answer to another post here, the donation requests were ON THE SITE ITSELF... the users of the service were the people targeted, as opposed to random community members; and his most recent attempt (sponsorship by other sites that directly benefit from the service - in this case, MacGamer, whose site gets visited when interest in one of the subsites' games goes up ) fell through.)

Wow, that was a messy sentence.

Bottom line - he's paid for the bandwidth used by the site for 3 years. (Okay, I paid for a large chunk of it in the early days, when the Mill was running out of b.org - but that ended a year and a half ago, and every penny of the operating costs from that point on has been paid by Fm.) As the site states, over 7.5 terabytes have been downloaded since stats have been kept... that's a lot of bytes. And at this point, Fm doesn't have the resources to continue paying for them. So, either the community picks up the slack (looks like that's not gonna happen :( ), or the site closes.

Which sucks.

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

The Ar'kives: Does Anybody Care?REB 3/27/02 6:06 p.m.
     Re: The Ar'kives: Does Anybody Care?Rincewind MoG 3/27/02 6:50 p.m.
           Re: The Ar'kives: Does Anybody Care?Hamish Sinclair 3/28/02 12:14 a.m.
                 Re: The Ar'kives: Does Anybody Care?D-M.A. 3/28/02 12:44 a.m.
                       and he's in the corny-stage :) NTD-M.A. 3/28/02 12:48 a.m.
           Re: The Ar'kives: Does Anybody Care?Ernie 3/30/02 3:16 p.m.
     Re: The Ar'kives: Does Anybody Care?Tophet 3/27/02 8:04 p.m.
     Before you get your panties in a bunch...(long)Tycho 3/27/02 9:10 p.m.
           Re: Before you get your panties in a bunch...(longDjof 3/27/02 10:20 p.m.
                 Re: Before you get your panties in a bunch...(longTycho 3/27/02 10:47 p.m.
                       Re: Before you get your panties in a bunch...(longDjof@School 3/28/02 8:35 a.m.
                             Re: Before you get your panties in a bunch...(longTycho 3/28/02 10:11 a.m.
                                   Re: Before you get your panties in a bunch...(longDjof@School 3/28/02 11:36 a.m.
                                         Re: Before you get your panties in a bunch...(longTycho 3/28/02 11:54 a.m.
                                               Re: Before you get your panties in a bunch...(longClaude Errera 3/29/02 5:56 a.m.
                                                     Re: Before you get your panties in a bunch...(longDjof 3/29/02 12:14 p.m.
           what?M-Class 3/28/02 2:15 p.m.
           Re: Before you get your panties in a bunch...(longREB 3/29/02 12:10 a.m.
                 Re: Before you get your panties in a bunch...(longD-M.A. 3/29/02 1:32 a.m.
                       could someone send me money, I need more glue! *NM*D-M.A. 3/29/02 1:35 a.m.
     Clearing the air...Claude Errera 3/28/02 6:17 a.m.
           Re: Clearing the air...Tycho 3/28/02 10:09 a.m.
                 Re: Clearing the air...Simon dupuis 3/28/02 11:24 a.m.
                 Re: Clearing the air...Claude Errera 3/28/02 11:30 a.m.
           Very well put ... but ...Jester 3/28/02 7:14 p.m.
                 durr ... "obligated" ... not "obliged". *NM*Jester 3/28/02 8:28 p.m.
                       "obliged" is right -- "obligated" is a corruption *NM*[zudo] 3/29/02 10:41 a.m.
                             http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=obligated (NT)Mark Levin 3/29/02 11:23 a.m.
                                   Nonetheless, obligated is a corruption of obligedzudo 3/30/02 5:16 a.m.
                 Re: Very well put ... but ...Tycho 3/28/02 9:43 p.m.
                       Re: Very well put ... but ...Jester 3/29/02 12:26 a.m.
                             Re: Very well put ... but ...Mark Levin 3/29/02 11:26 a.m.
                                   Very well put! *NM*Vid Boi 3/29/02 11:31 a.m.
                                   Re: Very well put ... but ...Jester 3/29/02 2:50 p.m.
                       Re: Very well put ... but ...Claude Errera 3/29/02 6:13 a.m.
           Re: Clearing the air...Tophet 3/28/02 9:17 p.m.
     Re: The Ar'kives: Does Anybody Care?Andrew Nagy 3/29/02 7:25 p.m.
           Re: The Ar'kives: Does Anybody Care?REB 3/29/02 7:46 p.m.



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