11 replies to this topic

[zakaluka]

This petition is completely pointless. There is nothing stopping anyone from tuning a radio to any AM news station or the Emergency Broadcast Station to get updates on their area. If you have a cell phone with internet access, you can use your mobile browser to check updates on the US govt's site and weather.com.

If a company is providing an additional service, i.e. sending SMS / text messages to cell phones or even calling your house to warn you, then they should be compensated for that. The fee is not for the information, but for the added convenience of how it is delivered to you.

I doubt you would be complaining that the cell phone company is charging you money to access the internet so you can get weather updates, which is the same exact thing. Otherwise, nothing to do with any so-called "public domain" information could be monetized at all, and this is not the case.

In your petition, you even mention that the information can be obtained for free. So, what do you have against companies that are selling the information as well? Are they stopping you from using your free sources? If not, there is no basis for stopping a company from conducting legitimate business. Are you trying to protect "innocents" from being bilked by them? Then start an education / awareness program in your neighborhood. Just because you don't want to pay someone to call your home in case of a weather alert, doesn't mean your neighbors don't want to either.

I don't mean to sound rude. However, trying to shut down companies providing real added value benefits to free information is a ridiculous demand.

Regards,

z.

[rpgsearcherz]

willielwgg, on Mar 2 2009, 03:36 PM, said:

Actually chocolate chip cookies can have a copyright. Toll House
But I understand what you mean

What about Mrs. whateverhername is..... I don't know her name since I don't eat a lot of cookies but she's pretty common.


As for the idea to make this information "free," I don't see an issue with charging for it. Making it free would be like saying "Blizzard, you should make World of Warcraft free to play because other games like (insert hundreds of free MMORPG's here) are all free to play!"

The reason our technology is as far as it is is because of the money involved, and the profits.

The reason the news stations offer free news is because they are paid by advertisers just for broadcasting because people watch their channel. When they're making hundreds of millions of dollars a month for just broadcasting, they will do things to entice more people to watch them.

As for the paid services, they are *not* being paid just to make you pay attention to them, so they pass on their cost to the users.


Think of it like this:

There are two car companies, A and B.
Car company A gets $50 million a month in advertisement revenue because they have people who are loyal to them and there are so many
Car company B makes $1 million a month in advertisement revenue because car company A already has all the advertisers/people

You then go to rent one of the cars. Car company A can give it to you for free because their benefit is high, not to mention added exposure.
Car company B would be losing money if they were not to charge, because they do not have the same exposure or income.



The same thing happens with the weather.