OT: News.Individual.NET not free of charge anymore

[Lee Michaels]

Dear users of News.Individual.NET,

effective from April 1th, 2005, use of News.Individual.NET will not be free of charge anymore. The news service will continue as a fee-based service.

The details: ============

Effective immediately, registration for our news service is only possible through our web site:

by e-mail (as hitherto) is no longer possible.

Holders of existing accounts who want to continue using their account need to convert it into a pay account. This is also only possible through our web site:

will also find all details on payment options, terms of use, and terms of contract on the web site.

The time until March 31th, 2005, is a transitional period so that holders of existing accounts will have plenty of time for convenient conversion. Sign-up for new accounts or conversion of existing accounts made within the transitional period (before April 1th, 2005) will not cause any disadvantages:

Contracts concluded within the transitional period will last until March 31th, 2006 (Annual Subscription) or June 30th, 2005 (3 Months Subscription) without additional costs. Then the contracts will auto- matically renew themselves for another year or another three months respectively.

Important notes:

Effective from April 1th, 2005, all non-converted accounts will stop working.

Users who use the server News.CIS.DFN.DE as part of the DFNNetNews project are not effected by the changes described above. Nothing will change for these users, they do not need to do anything.

The fee: ========

The fee for an account for News.Individual.NET is 10 EUR per year (annual payment), that converts to only 0.84 EUR per month. The price includes VAT at 16%.

The background: ===============

The tradition of running news servers at Freie Universitaet Berlin goes back as far as 1989 (historic keyword: "Methan"). The news service was open for external users ever since: Until 1992, there was no access restriction at all (as usual at that time). Later, a basic access management where IP numbers and domain names were added on request was established.

Starting with the CIS project (a third-party funded project of DFN) of ZEDAT of Freie Universitaet Berlin, the news service was expanded by the feature of registration for individual users in the beginning of the year 1998:

News.CIS.DFN.DE was born. (*)

(*) see Message-ID:

After the CIS project was finished in mid 2002, the administrators kept this service alive by maintaining it mainly in their spare time. Since this was not sustainable in perpetuity, options on how to raise money from external people and institutions for the provision and maintenance of the service had to be researched and created. Several approaches to find sponsors for the service eventually failed, especially due to the lack of understanding by the potential sponsors for the nature of Usenet.

Since July 1th, 2003, ZEDAT offers - again in cooperation with DFN - news services to other research and education institutions for money (service name: "DFNNetNews"). In the course of this cooperation, the server name "News.CIS.DFN.DE" vested exclusively to DFNNetNews:

"News.Individual.DE" and "News.Individual.NET" are the new server names under which the service is available for the more than 250,000 external individual users that were registered since the beginning of 1998.

After a long evaluation and preparation period, the service will convert to a fee-based service for these external individual users effective from April 1th, 2005. We regret that it is no longer possible to offer this service free of charge.

We would be very happy if our service convinced its users of its quality and of the engagement of its operators during the many years of its existence so that they decide to stay our users even if the service is not free of charge anymore.

Besides, we would - of course - like to thank all people that recommended our service over the years and used it responsibly and carefully in the spirit of Usenet!

Best regards, the NetNews Team of Freie Universitaet Berlin

Glossary: =========

CIS = DFN project "Center for Information Services" DFN = Germany's National Research and Education Network ZEDAT = Computer Center of Freie Universitaet Berlin

[A.M. Wood]

Interesting business plan. Charge money for something that Google offers for free.

[Dave Hinz]

Yeah, that's right, they're exactly the same thing (rolls eyes).

Enjoy google. You don't know what you're missing, or the history of the situation, but if it makes you feel better to bash them, by all means do carry on.

[A.M. Wood]

Just how many people will opt for the pay service, not once but on a sustained basis, when a reasonable substitute, which we can expect will improve with advances in technology, is available for free. My own experience is that it is difficult to compete with free. Especially when the provider is generating revenue through advertising. Keep in mind, this is a business for Google. They are providing this service as part of their businesss plan and they have every reason to keep it going. Additionally, they have the cash flow, access to technology and the ability to raise the capital they need to do it.

Sure, a few will pay, but most will not. Keep in mind that a good chunk of the the value in these kinds of services is the size of the network. As the size of the fee based network declines, so too does its value.

Carrying this to its logical progression, and one that we have seen very frequently in recent history, as time marches on, the "free" service offers both a superior product and a lower cost.

As I said before. Opting to charge users money is terrible business model in this environment. How great the service was is really not the issue because people don't like to pay for what they had.

[Dave Hinz]

google doesn't come close to meeting my needs for a reliable nntp server, with aggressive antispam activities, and which I can interface to with my choice of tools. If you like reading usenet from a web browser, google is for you.

That's fine. They've been giving it away for many many years, which has always surprised me.

Yes, I'm very aware of how google makes their money. Their free service doesn't provide what I look for in a newsfeed.

Yes, and news.individual.net also has a means to get the cash flow they need. Nice of the German taxpayers to pay for my usenet feed for all these years, now it's my turn to pay for the service that I appreciate.

To you, perhaps. We use usenet servers in different ways, obviously.

In this case, only half of those are true, for the features I care about. For me, a web interface detracts from it's value, and the fact that google doesn't honor the cancelbot's antispam control messages is, to me, another reason to not use google.

Luckily, they're in charge, and you're not. If you were, I'd have to use an inferior tool that meets _your_ needs, not mine.

You're obviously not the target market, are you. Really - enjoy google. Some things are worth paying for, and for me, a full-featured robust stable fast newsserver, at a cost of $1.25 per month, is worth it. Hell, I spend several times that a _day_ in gasoline getting to work, or coffee. Sense of perspective and all that.

Dave Hinz

[J]

This is what it comes down to. Those who want an NNTP feed can buy it. Those who don't want it get to peek in via Google - well at least to some of what a real newsfeed has. I'm glad google took over the deja news archives and continues to make them available, but I'd be really unhappy if I had to read newsgroups through google.

-j

[A.M. Wood]

Dave,

I am not saying that Google is the end all be all in newsreaders and make not attempt to assert they are providing everyone with the service they desire.

I am saying that Google has developed a working business model that allows them to offer this and other services to users for free, and believe that in time they will find a way to incorporate the additional features that will meet the needs of users such as yourself. Sure, today browser access differs greatly from newsreader access, but you can expect those differences to become less distinctive as have differences in so many other applications. Yes, there are ads, but as it stands now the sponsored links are not a distraction and certainly nothing like the graphics providers like yahoo, msn and aol throw in your face all the time.

As a result, I think that the pay services are not going to be able to survive.

[Dave Hinz]

OK, good, because I'm also not saying that. A newsserver is a lot more than the GUI of reading usenet via the web.

Right. Just like commercial over the air TV is free, and you get to watch commercials. If you want to pay for HBO, you pay but you don't have commercials. Or broadcast radio vs. satellite radio. And so on. Different solutions.

Yes, but you're still stuck with google's presentation layer, and you have to (as far as I know) use their web interface if you want to use their newsserver. Doesn't fit my needs.

Wouldn't know, I don't use browser-based newsreading.

OK. I can't disagree that you think that. There are enough people who value features that you're not aware of, or don't care about, that I think they'll do just fine, thankyouverymuch.

[Bert]

Google does not do any binaries, which is very annoying.

Bert

[Dave Balderstone]

There's a LOT that Gooogle doesn't do.

Which is why I'm happy to pay for a decent news feed.

djb

[Tom Watson]

I've used them for a few years and found them to be excellent.

I will not pay them not a bit.

I will not pay them I will quit.

I will not pay them if they call.

I will not pay them not at all.

I will not pay them in my house.

I will not pay them with my mouse.

I will not pay them with my dollars.

I will not pay them if they holler.

I will not pay them with their bombast.

I will not pay them I have Comcast.

Burma Shave

tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

(webpage)

[Larry Blanchard]

Damm it Dave, you've got to quit posting things I agree with :-).

[Larry Blanchard]

I didn't get the original of this, so I'm using Dave's response quote. He didn't say the above, did.

So the number of people using a news server defines its value? Funny, I thought it was the completeness of its feeds. Which has nothing to do with users.

And despite the fact of being retired and of limited income, I'll pay n.i.n twice what they're asking rather than use Google. In fact, I'll pay them rather than use my current ISPs news server, which isn't all that bad, just to repay them for having a free service all the times my previous ISPs had lousy (or no) news servers.

[Larry Blanchard]

And there are still free news servers out there. I also use news.readfreenews.net although I understand they're not accepting new users at present.

[Dave Balderstone]

And if everyone who used them for free decides not to pay them 10 Euros a year they'll still be ahead of the game.

I've never used them but wish them well.

djb

[A.M. Wood]

"So the number of people using a news server defines its value? Funny, I thought it was the completeness of its feeds. Which has nothing to do with users. "

I said a good chunk of its value, not all. Keep in mind that completeness of feeds is only relevant if there is something to send. (The network to which I was referring.) I doubt anyone would give a hoot how completely they received nothing :)

My point however is not whether or not the newsreader has value today. My point is that technology is changing. Other alternatives are becomming available. Those alternatives are free to users. As time passes, as we have seen with every other new technology, new products will be developed that are compatible with the new technology and incompatible with the old technology, rendering the older technology obsoltete.

As I originally stated, a business plan that relies on charging money to use the old technology in the face of these circumstances is terrible. The business cannot be expected to last.

[Kevin Craig]

Teranews continues to offer a free service, with limited bandwidth per day (but it resets every day if you do trip the threshold). If you don't do binaries, you won't have to worry about the limit.

[Robert Bonomi]

Yup. there are only about *EIGHTY* (!!) other _established_ companies offering NNTP server services. Most of them 'for pay'. And making significant profits at it. Most of them charge an order of magnitude _more_ than individual.net proposes to charge.

Your ignorance of product offerings, and the *actual* marketplace is showing.

Google is a *terrible* alternative to what "real" news-reader software, talking to an NNTP server, provides.

Of course, If Google is all you've ever used, you simply "don't know any better". However, there is an old Persian proverb about, among other things, "those who don't know what they don't know".

[Silvan]

I always thought it was a bit odd that the German taxpayers were footing the bill for me to have a free news server.

OTOH, I have a crappy but paid for news server from my ISP, so I guess I'm back to that. I'm too much of a cheap bastard to pay $13 a year for something I can get for free, and I don't see enough difference between these two (back on my ISP's server now) to make it worth considering the PITA factor of sending money off to Germany anyway.

[Lee Michaels]

"Silvan" wrote

I know what you mean.

I first signed up for the service when my ISP's news servers were dropping a major chunk of each day's posts. The final straw was when they dropped all my posts.

Since that time, I have been through three different news servers with them. The present one actually works. The only problem is that about 5 % of the posts are posted a little late ( 1-5 hours). I can live with that.

Soooo...., I wish them well. And I know they will provide a good service for their customers. And I will use them as a backup if I need to in the future.

But I can do with what I got now.