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Message: [QUOTE="Walter Roberson, post: 4763761"] :I responded that I paid to be online, and in that I meant that I had a right :to be here and ask questions as much as the next person. Could I ask you to explain that in more detail? Is your implication that someone who has not "paid to be online" has less right to express reasonable ideas/opinions than you, a paying customer of your ISP have? For example, I happen to be accessing this newsgroup through the equipment at my workplace, because this newsgroup is one that is very useful in learning how to use an important tool that I use as part of my employment. I am thus not "paying" to access the group, and indeed sometimes I get paid to access it. Are you attempting to convey that my right of expression is less than yours? Mind you, right at the moment, I'm connected to work via a residential DSL service that my wife is paying for. If our family's residential DSL service costs more than what you pay, do we have stronger rights of expression than you do? And should that "costs more" be on absolute terms or relative to the cost of living differences between our locations? Is there a formulae for determining who has more right of access that can be applied to people who are in areas where telecommunications is expensive but the cost of living is low, or vice versas? There have been times when I have accessed this newsgroup through a server operated by a non-profit group that I volunteered considerable amounts of time to. They didn't pay me, I didn't pay them, but the -value- of my contribution was high (the equivilent of several *years* of full-time expert labour.) How do you figure our relative rights to expression in that situation, where I paid with heavy effort but not with my pocketbook? Is it, in short, your suggestion that this newsgroup ought to comport itself under the principle that the person who has paid the most in out-of-pocket expenses to access the newsgroup should be the person with the greatest influence on the way the newsgroup denizens interact? If so, then shall we discuss the accounting rules we shall use to determine those expenses? Net? Gross? Amoritized? 3 year rule? Canadian Capital Costs Recovery rules (i.e., sinking fund which is never entirely extinguished, as compared to the more common US 3-years total write-off accounting rule)? Should "system software" be depreciated at a different rate than "system hardware?" Canadian CCR rules put those on the same schedule but allow "application software" to be written off in one year. How shall we take into account different rates of inflation in different areas? How shall we take into account currancy fluctuations? [/QUOTE]

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