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On Wed, 12 Apr 1995, Steve Outing wrote:

> On 4/12/95, meyer@newslink.org wrote:
> >What it says is that trade magazines absolutely will NOT grant rights, or
> >will get fat off proceeds from lawsuits if Individual tries to steal briefs
> >from them anyway.
Trade magazines have been granting rights to on-line services for years.  
Look at Dow Jones' NRS.  The Web server interface just improves the 
quality of the presentation.

> >No publisher is ever going to willingly agree to sell his or her product on
> >a per-article basis when there's an alternative. The profit motive just isn't
> >there. One article can sell an entire issue on the newsstand, and one or two
> >issues can sell a whole year's subscription. Unless you charge enough per 
> >item to make up for this -- and that's a price the marketplace will never bear
> >-- there's no incentive.
The question isn't weather to sel on a per-item basis, but to determine 
what sort of bulk/period bundle the market will bear.  ADP and Quotron 
mix Rueters, Dow Jones, S&P, and about 20 other publishers for a nice 
flat fee.  When ADP pays a "lump sum", it's based on how much of what 
type of information they believe users are willing to pay for is being 
provided by what services.

The biggest draw to wires is when a customer gets hit with a $4000 NRS 
bill because one of their users browsed a few hundred articles from 
nrs.dowjones.com.

> Looking over Individual's content providers, I see that the majority are 
> trade pubs -- more than 200 of 'em. They've already contracted with Individual 
> to take part in this experiment. Clearly there is a profit motive at work 
> here. What is less clear is the impact that a service like Newspage will have 
> in the long term on the trade pubs. If people relied on the Newspage service 
> as it stands today as their source of industry news rather than read the 
> trades directly -- as I said I would be thrilled to do -- then the trade pubs' 
> advertisers are getting left out of the picture. To maintain the relationship 
> with the trades, I would think Individual would eventually have to figure out 
> how to bring the trade pubs' advertisers into the mix as well. Advertisers 
> will have to be assured that their message comes across to print and online 
> readers. Otherwise the entire trade publishing industry gets slowly undermined 
> by a product like Newspage.
On-Line trade journals are not a new phenomina.  McGraw-Hill has publishe 
on-line through NRS for years.  What the web makes possible is the 
ability to quickly and conveniently add pictures, sound (try that on a 
newspaper), and advertizing.

> Steve Outing                                  Planetary News, Inc.

From rballard@cnj.digex.net Tue Apr 18 19:31:21 1995
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