I will now upgrade to paid version of chat room with all additional benefits of a paying customer, including right to complain and lay blame and threaten provider because they cost me potential new business and lost me those existing clients.

Take a look at free services you use online and analyze them to see how a failure to perform would affect your bottom line.

How important are those free services you rely on? Are they risks to your business future? Note that 'Terms of Service' on vast majority of free services online tell you outright that providers have no obligation to serve your needs if there are problems and that you have no recourse should your business fail because FREE service has it's costs after all.

We all have a budget to work within to operate a site profitably but would it cost you more if that free web host went down than it would cost to pay for your web hosting? If your email doesn't get delivered because your free email account suffers from a system failure, would it hurt your sales or customer relations? If that online fax service stopped working when you were waiting for a big contract from a new client, would you be better off upgrading to paid version of service with more benefits?

We'll reschedule that chat, now that we've paid for it -- DOUBLE! Whatcha want fer free? GRRRRRRRR!!!

Mike Banks Valentine Mike Banks Valentine operates WebSite101 Short Course, Small Business Internet Tutorial http://website101.com/

This approach allows exposure for authors and results in sales of products or services from their web sites. The method of producing and distributing web content is an accepted means of small business exposure for little guy. Sometimes we are infiltrated by publicists and distributors of PR for large content "owners" seeking wider distribution and access to a small business market segment.

This inevitably leads to threats from publishers of "affiliate" articles for distribution. They are suddenly concerned that we are using their copyrighted articles and book excerpts for purposes other than those intended by affiliate programs they are connected with. They then threaten list and affiliates posting their "articles" (read PR pieces) with copyright violation. This is bizarre, frustrating and worrisome.

Is it free or not?

Another talk at this conference by Stewart Brand, author of "How Buildings Learn, What Happens to Them After They Are Built" who is often quoted as saying "Information wants to be free". He would be a welcome contributor at "Free-Content" list and would probably upset a lot of list participants torn between small business ecommerce, copyright issues and other business concerns about "ownership" and protecting that ownership.

Authors who contribute to free content request that their articles only be used if their "Resource Box" is maintained and a link to their site is listed. It is doubtful that any would persue violators in court if that condition were not met, simply because most lack financial resources to do so. No money, no law suit. Simple.

Is it free or not?