Re: [ARSCLIST] MP3 bit rates and usage factors for Web pages

[Mike Richter <mrichter@xxxxxxx>]

Tom Fine wrote:
> Hi Marie:
>
> Is your university a state-funded institution? Does it receive federal
> tax-supported grants? Then why don't the taxpayers of Mississippi and the
> larger United States have an ownership stake in what you produce and are
> therefore entitled to free access? Just curious.
>
> -- Tom Fine

Why do you assume (assert?) that an ownership stake means free access? 
One purchases copies of public-domain documents from conventional 
libraries - costs are recouped. One pays a fee to use the facilities of 
a park supported by national, state or other government.

There are costs associated with providing the materials for public 
access. We are intimately familiar with the overhead of the facilities 
and staff to acquire and maintain the material and to produce the 
post-able selections, but there are also servers, connections and 
traffic costs. They may not be visible if you use the facilities of your 
institution (as they are for those of us paying for them ourselves), but 
they are present and can be substantial.

In fact, the Subject here depends on those costs in practice. Those 
recommending high bitrates and multiple channels are likely to be in an 
environment where the pipe to the Internet is presumed infinitely wide 
and the users are presumed to have broadband connections in the 
institutional class (T1 or better). A substantial number of visitors to 
my primary site are on dialup and I rarely post anything which would 
burden them. That affects not only selection of content but also bitrate 
in a way that others need not consider.

Mike
--
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/