I think  if you took a  step back from  the issue you would  realize that
this  not  only was  bound  to  happen, but  is  a  perfectly normal  and
justified development. More and more  people are getting connected to the
Internet and want to use e-mail as a vehicle for information they used to
get by FAX, snail mail, etc. I suppose  we would all agree that this is a
good thing.  Well then,  what are information  providers supposed  to do?
They need to  charge for the information  in order to be  able to produce
it. If they can't charge for it when it's delivered on the Internet, they
can't deliver it that way and they'll  have to keep wasting paper just so
that  they can  collect the  money they  need to  prepare or  compile the
information.  The Internet  is unique  in  that, unlike  other media,  it
started as a 100% free (to the  end user) service. This was possible to a
large extent because of government  subsidies. This model clearly doesn't
scale  up and  people  have been  doing business  over  the Internet  for
several years already.  I mean when a  customer writes to me  to report a
problem and I answer, we've saved an  expensive phone call and none of us
has  really contributed  anything to  the people  who help  configure and
manage the  mail systems we've used  (all right, in this  particular case
the correspondants usually  *are* the people who manage  the mail systems
in question, but you get the point :-) ). What happens when we do that is
that we decrease costs, and this translates to reduced software bills for
everyone's benefit. Everyone wins except AT&T :-)
 
  Eric