Re: Attention, Fat Corporate Bastards

Jeff Bone (jbone@activerse.com)
Fri, 06 Aug 1999 16:43:31 -0500


> No censorship, no advertisements, no lawsuits

No censorship is a requirement in general; in particular, though, there
will be zones of censorship --- call it "editorial control." And that's
fine; we want lots of kids online, for instance, but if the only way to
do that is to create zones of limited access then that's probably okay.
Right? The key is "no censorship by gov't or carriers."

Asking for no ads --- or doing things to make an end-run around ads ---
is like pissing in your own pool. The key to the popularity of the Web
and the proliferation and growth of useful Web services is the indirect
revenue model, where the recipient of the value doesn't pay, rather
someone else pays. Aside from e-commerce, the driver for everything
almost everything is eyeballs --- I just don't see that there's any way
to reconcile "free" and "no ads." ("Ad" being loosely defined, and this
applying to general consumers, natch.)

Asking for no lawsuits is noble, but good luck. ;-)

$0.02,

jb