I have a feature request. It's not a technical feature request, it is a business policy feature request.
Denise writes: > That's the kind of thing I mean when I say that we're looking at ways > of collecting active revenue that will work *with* the social economy > and not against it. Groovy. So I have a request. I'm going to being going into business for myself in (anticipated) about 3 years. I keep getting cool ideas for side lines to my main business plan (recommended for folks starting in the industry I will be). These ideas are are all *professional services* -- not goods, not retail -- to be delivered to users via some online platform, for which LJ would be just dandy. For instance, I would love to be able to hold virtual professional seminars. That is, an online asynchronous workshop about some topic in which I am expert, for which I charge admission. Since the sort of seminar I'm thinking of is primarily discussion/writing based, for a small group of people (say 10), and lasts for multiple weeks or months (say an academic semester), but needs no synchronous communication or multimedia support, LJ could work great. That's just one idea I have of many. In fact, LJ, as it stands right now, would be just about perfect for what I would be looking for (no surprise: I come up with these ideas while using LJ, thinking, "Hey, I could *use* this..."). I'm not talking about adding any additional functionality. I don't need any shopping carts or financial transactions. I can do that at Paypal and/or Kagi. And nobody would even know I was there, unless I told them. Totally zero impact on other users' browsing/functionality experience. I don't need the ability to advertise my business' presence (though if you make that service available, I may take you up on it). I could be doing this on LJ today, but for the one thing I do need. Permission. Because right now, doing this would be in violation of LJ TOS item X: X. NO RESALE OF SERVICE You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell, or exploit any portion of the Service, use of the Service, or access to the Service. I checked. I make a Support request for clarification. Apparently, they wound up bouncing it all the way to the corporate lawyers, and the upshot was that doing what I propose -- which amounts to charging money to friend someone back or to access a community -- is in a grey area and if I wanted to stay on the straight-and-narrow, no, I shouldn't do it. I'm not willing to base a business model on breaking rules, so I've not done it. Seems perfectly reasonable to me that the privilege of conducting business on LJ -- or DW -- should be one that's *paid* for. At some point I hope to do this *somewhere*. I'd rather use the LJ technology for a delivery platform for something like a seminar because, as it happens, I do some evaluation of "LMS" platforms as part of my job and I know that products like Blackboard, eCollege, and Moodle are exactly *not* what I want to be using, for various reasons. (Meanwhile, my email listserver addiction is entirely recreational, but I know that's not the right platform for my business plans, either.) And I'd REALLY rather have my money go to another small business that I like and believe in and want to support. Like DWS. So I'm hoping DWS will consider selling me the permission to have private communities/journals for which I charge for access/membership. -- Siderea _______________________________________________ dw-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.dwscoalition.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dw-discuss
