Re: Hit-metering: to Proposed Standard?

> Ari Luotonen:
> Before there's any confusion on this matter: the hit reporting in
> Mogul, Leach draft discloses ONLY the number of hits, NOTHING else.
> That's the least bit of information you need to have in order to find
> out how much of your services were used.  No individual users' private
> information was disclosed.

That is the part of the draft that I really like and appriciate, handing out 
simple counts is OK as long as I preserve the privacy of my users.

> > Am I missing something here? Why would large online services give *any*
> > information about their proxy stats to an outside group? I certainly would
> > not do so for Joe Q. Not My Customer.
> 
> Because you _are_ relaying _their_ services, for _your_ customers,
> your paying customers that have chosen to use that service.  By
> co-operating you can serve that data faster from your cache, and
> you're not "stealing" the data and making your own illegal copies.

The other way to look at that is that I as cachemaster am giving the 
information providers a free ride: they get free diskspace and the illusion of 
good connectivity, for which they should pay me and be grateful since I serve 
_their_ consumers. Demanding hitcounts from me is demanding that I provide 
them with further service for which I get nothing but more network traffic and 
added complexity. There are at least two sides to every coin.


Ingrid
 PS: Until they cull me on my head with something hard, I will argue for web 
caches as pure network buffers; no stealing or illegality in buffering bits.
-- 
  Ingrid.Melve@uninett.no          MIME, PGP and PEM email encouraged
  Der telte han meg. Oوووووووو, han telte meg, han telte meg.

Received on Wednesday, 20 November 1996 10:49:28 UTC