Newsgroups: bit.listserv.pacs-l
Date:         Wed, 8 Apr 1992 11:11:22 CDT
From:         Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <LIBPACS@UHUPVM1.BITNET>
Subject:      Network License Agreements

 2 Messages, 67 Lines
*-----
From: dbb@Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: Network License Agreements
It would be nice to see vendors add some value to a product that is priced
higher as a result of being installed on a network: specifically, the
ability to track/meter simultaneous users and perhaps usage hours or
searches.  This moves us towards a charging model in which consumers know
what they are receiving for their money, and vendors can measure what they
are providing.  Network-connected, multiple-use workstations will soon be
the norm, and it seems an odd thing to be basing pricing on guesses about
the uses and justification of an organization's network capacity, rather
than on some measure of how much of  "product" is actually being
"consumed".

>It's messy, but I prefer the free market to alternatives.  It's the
>one-price-fits-all philosophy of "rational pricing" that has given
>us business-oriented pricing and rampant software piracy.
>
>                                        -- Ken Laws


License agreements and their cost will of course continue to evolve in a
free market environment.  When consumers share experiences with each other,
when they complain about products or make suggestions to producers, that is
the free market operating.

David Buchanan
dbb@virginia.edu
*-----
From:     <KINGH@SNYSYRV1>
Subject:  Re: Network License Agreements
From "Government Information as a Public Asset." Hearing before the Joint
Committee on Printing. 102 Congress 1st session. April 25, 1991.

        Pricing Policies
        Another troubling problem is that Congress and the administration are
showing an increasing tendency to price information resources according to
willingness-to-pay criteria, rather than the traditional criteria of
reproduction and dissemination costs [which I suspect is true of all vendors
and publishers in all formats but CD-ROM especially -- HMK]. '...The cost of
reproducing a 100 page document, for example, would rarely be more than $10,
and perhaps as little a $1 or less, depending upon the press run and the
reproduction method. ... Suppose, however, that the information was data that we
re most useful in electronic format.  The Bureau of Census charges $60 for a sin
gle diskette of information.  The materials for this product would cost about
20 cents, and the other $59.80 would be the Bureau of Census's charges for
copying the diskette.  If the data were sold on magnetic tape the Bureau of
the Census would charge $175 or more for the information.  This $175 charge
would cover the Bureau's cost of approximately $15 for the materials, and
about $160 for duplicating the inforamtion.  If the same information was
sold by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) it might be
priced at $500 or even more'" (Congressman Jim Bates, pp 97-98).

        I submit, again, that the cost of a CD-ROM product has little
relationship to the costs of production.  Electronic reproduction and
transmission of information is cheaper than print reproduction and
transmission.  The cost of today's and tomorrow's electronic information
products, if left to vendors and publishers, will be determined by how
much profit the vendor and publisher want (not need) to achieve and how
much they must sacrifice to beat out the competition.

Hannah King
SUNY HSC Library at Syracuse
kingh@snysyrv1
kingh@vax.cs.hscsyr.edu
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU