<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 5.50.4616.200" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY style="MARGIN-TOP: 2px; FONT: 10pt Arial; MARGIN-LEFT: 2px"
bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV>Well we could debate this for months. Let me clear up a few things
first:</DIV>
<DIV>1) We are technically an ISP, but since Microsoft started putting the
connect to the internet icon on its desk top the idea of what is an ISP has
changed. We are an ISP which does not offer direct connection to the
Internet, only to a server on the Internet. We were and still are a
founding member of Washington Association of Internet Service Providers (WAISP)
which is a lobbying group. But due to the failure of most of the local
ISPs to either survive or not get eaten by the national big fish, WAISP could
soon die from a lack of membership. So it depends on your definition of an
ISP.</DIV>
<DIV>2) As far as the costs for an ISP - these are well know and we have
investigated them. If we were to take NWNexos for example, it had a budget
of several millions when WindStar bought it and still it failed to be
profitable. There are way too many factors to make this a simple
calculation. We would also change our profile and start to impact
others like wolfnet, drizzle and eskimo. There are several ISPs open
to offers in the area, go look at their books if you think this is a viable
proposition. From my costings, I worked out that we would need about $5-10
Million a year for SCN's operations and service to be "professional", plus a
major culture shift. Which is way too many $10 customers.</DIV>
<DIV>3) I am confused by the 501(c)3 comment. Lobbying is not a high
priority for SCNA at present. The thing that Eugene did, as far as I can
see, is that it needed money and decided to do a fee for service. They
didn't read the small print though. Any fee for service is fine if the
service is educational, but as a connection to the Internet, it is
deemed by the IRS to not be educational. They currently
agree that the service is educational, but the connection to the
internet is offered by 100s of other vendors which are commercial.
Therefore this breaks the 501(c)3 agreement with the IRS. Plus it
brings us back to the first point - we are a connection to a "service" which is
educational and on the Internet.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Personally, if I thought a for-profit with low cost for service would make
a profit, I would be doing that rather than working for SCN as a volunteer
CEO. Plus I think I know where I could have gotten a few "staff" that
might wish to work for me rather than volunteering. So if running a
cheap access ISP were profitable, then where are they? They came and
most went with the dot.coms.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Steve</DIV>
<DIV>=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=<BR>Steve
Guest <A
href="mailto:steveg@scn.org">steveg@scn.org</A>
<A href="mailto:steve@groupworks.org">steve@groupworks.org</A><BR>VP of Board
and ED of Seattle Community Network<BR>(425) 653
7353
<A href="http://www.scn.org/">http://www.scn.org/</A><BR></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=emailer1@netzero.net href="mailto:emailer1@netzero.net">emailer1</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=Marilyn.Sheck@spl.org
href="mailto:Marilyn.Sheck@spl.org">Marilyn Sheck</A> ; <A
title=scna-board@scn.org
href="mailto:scna-board@scn.org">scna-board@scn.org</A> ; <A
title=steveg@scn.org href="mailto:steveg@scn.org">steveg@scn.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=douglas@scn.org
href="mailto:douglas@scn.org">douglas@scn.org</A> ; <A title=scn@scn.org
href="mailto:scn@scn.org">scn@scn.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, December 27, 2001 1:42
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: BD: Re: SCN: "Free-Nets" in
Los Angeles Times</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>The key part of Steve Guest's message is the following:</DIV>
<DIV>____________________</DIV>
<DIV>"I do not see SCN being able to commit<BR>to supplying free full internet
access for our users.<BR><BR>Plus - this was not what SCN was designed to
offer. It is initialy an<BR>email and maillist site which grew into a
major web resource for Seattle.<BR>We were never in the free ISP
business."</DIV>
<DIV>_____________________</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The above contains a Catch 22 element. (1) We do not have the funds
and staff to support a full ISP (including standard graphical
functions); and (2) we will continue to offer a very limited type of
service and so we will NEVER attract or bring in the funds to support such a
full ISP service.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Rather than mere speculation, it will be necessary to get a proper
accounting (indepent) to determine</DIV>
<DIV>1. How much funding it would take to operate an independent, proper
ISP. (Staff and hardware)</DIV>
<DIV>2. How many paying subscribers it would take (at $10/month) to
support such an ISP service. (This price would under cut almost all
other services.)</DIV>
<DIV>3. How many low-income subscriptions could be offered for little or
no cost under this full ISP scenario.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>If the answers to 1 and 2 are positive (i.e., it would be doable to get
enough subscribers to fully fund all aspects of a complete ISP service), THEN
it would be appropriate to discuss abandoning the tax-free status and switch
to a for-profit service. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>By the way, the tax-free status comes at a cost: SCNA cannot
lobby. SCNA, like Eugene was, is severely limited by the IRS as to
what low-income services it can offer and as to what philosophical stance it
can follow actively.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The library connection also has similar costs. If SCNA actually did
become active (read "controversial"), the library could no longer provide free
connection. As Steve pointed out, "(SCN)A is initialy an email and
maillist site." The design of the organization is limited by that
earlier small mission. Keeping the library "sponsorship" and the
subsequent tax-free status prevent SCNA from being a desireable ISP and from
being an effective community influence.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Until an independent accounting can answer 1, 2, & 3, there is no way
to describe SCNA's potential or future. It can only continue to
drift.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>P.S.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>About the statement: "We were never in the free ISP
business." </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Actually, that is exactly what we used to tell everyone -- that
we WERE a free ISP.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=Marilyn.Sheck@spl.org href="mailto:Marilyn.Sheck@spl.org">Marilyn
Sheck</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=scna-board@scn.org
href="mailto:scna-board@scn.org">scna-board@scn.org</A> ; <A
title=steveg@scn.org href="mailto:steveg@scn.org">steveg@scn.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=douglas@scn.org
href="mailto:douglas@scn.org">douglas@scn.org</A> ; <A title=scn@scn.org
href="mailto:scn@scn.org">scn@scn.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, December 21, 2001 1:53
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: BD: Re: SCN: "Free-Nets"
in Los Angeles Times</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Well said, Steve. And, YES, you are right about the library not
being able</DIV>
<DIV>to sustain your internet feed if your traffic increased. We are
already having</DIV>
<DIV>trouble with our bandwidth just with SCN in its present form combined
with</DIV>
<DIV>our own services. We would not be able to use public funds, which
is what</DIV>
<DIV>we pay for the Internet connection with, to support SCN's connection if
it</DIV>
<DIV>is more than a small fraction of our overall bandwidth
usage.<BR><BR>>>> <A
href="mailto:steveg@scn.org">steveg@scn.org</A> 12/21/01 01:08PM
>>><BR>Hi<BR>Well first off we do have free dialup service.
On the other hand, this is<BR>basic command style access and not FREE
Internet access. I agree it would<BR>be great to offer such services,
but we have address some important issues<BR>first.<BR><BR>Let me try and
explain why we do not have free internet access.<BR><BR>1) If we were to
offer free unrestricted connections to the Internet via<BR>our free dial
service and our SPL donated connection to the Internet, then<BR>the traffic
which SCN uses would jump considerably. This would be<BR>followed by
the lose of our donated Internet feed, because currently I<BR>have been led
to believe that the Library would not be able to justify the<BR>cost of the
service. This would mean that we would have to provide our<BR>own
Internet feed. At this point we raise the need then to be in
the<BR>Library because we are then simply taking up their limited
space. So if<BR>this was to happen then SCN would have to cover the
phone lines, the<BR>Internet feed and possible the cost of a new
location. We do not have the<BR>budget for this and we would be out of
funds within months or weeks.<BR><BR>2) If we were to offer such a service
with a fee, as indicated that<BR>Victoria in Canada does, then we open
another can of worms. First lets<BR>point out we are not in Canada and
therefore have a whole different set of<BR>rules to abide by. One of
these is the IRS. They are already looking at<BR>FreeNets because our
"charitable" status is based on the educational value<BR>of the
service. As soon as we set up a competing service with a<BR>commercial
service such as MSN or AOL - fee for service - in an area which<BR>is not
directly education then we fall outside the charitable status.<BR>Thus we
lose the 501(c)3 status. This is what happened or is happening
to<BR>Eugene FreeNet. They had to setup a commercial company to sell
their fee<BR>for service IP connections and break away from the educational
section.<BR>Again something that would put us at odds with the Library and
its<BR>donation to us.<BR><BR>The IRS are still sniping and they have not
yet gotten to SCN, but we are<BR>in their sights. We have to be
careful and stay legal.<BR><BR>Until we can figure out the IRS's view of
this, understand the Library's<BR>view, have the funds and staff to support
this and the software to ensure<BR>that we can guard against misuse - I do
not see SCN being able to commit<BR>to supplying free full internet access
for our users.<BR><BR>Plus - this was not what SCN was designed to
offer. It is initialy an<BR>email and maillist site which grew into a
major web resource for Seattle.<BR>We were never in the free ISP
business.<BR><BR>I hope this response is clear. I am not trying to say
we cannot discuss<BR>these points, but we need to ensure that we can support
our current<BR>services before we branch into
others.<BR><BR>Steve<BR>
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=<BR>Steve
Guest
steveg@scn.org
steve@groupworks.org<BR>VP of Board and ED of Seattle Community
Network<BR>(425) 653
7353
<A href="http://www.scn.org/">http://www.scn.org/</A><BR><BR>On Thu, 20 Dec
2001, patrick wrote:<BR><BR>> I wish SCN had low-cost, regular dial-up
service. Victoria freenet<BR>> has regular dial-up service for $104 a
year, which is a great deal.<BR>><BR>> Few people use Lynx and after
they have used Hotmail or some other<BR>> web-based service to check
their mail, after they have surfed the net<BR>> to check on items on
eBay, etc., one would find it hard to go to a<BR>> clunky Lynx browswer
to surf the web.<BR>><BR>> Patrick<BR>><BR>> --- Doug Schuler
<douglas@scn.org> wrote:<BR>> ><BR>> > A good article
entitled "Freenets Getting a New Lease on Life" is<BR>> > in today's
Los Angeles Times.<BR>> ><BR>> ><BR>> <A
href="http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-000100643dec20.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dtechnology">http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-000100643dec20.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dtechnology</A><BR>>
><BR>> > -- Doug<BR>> ><BR>> > * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * From the Listowner * * * * * * * * *<BR>> > * *
*<BR>> > . To unsubscribe from this list, send a
message to:<BR>> > majordomo@scn.org
In the body of the message, type:<BR>> >
unsubscribe scn<BR>> > ==== Messages posted on this list are also
available on the web at:<BR>> > ====<BR>> > * * * * * *
* <A
href="http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ ">http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/ </A>
* * * *<BR>> > * * *<BR><BR>* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *<BR>scna-board@scn.org is for the purposes of
scna board members' internal<BR>communications. Please contact
sharma@scn.org if you have questions<BR>about this
list.<BR></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>