DAVID ROLFE,
Sir, -As a long-time reader of The Irish Times on line and as someone who has the dubious distinction of having worked for a series of "dot com" companies I feel I am qualified to comment on the subject of charging for access to ireland.com.
Newswire stories can be found anywhere, along with headline news. Opinion pieces, editorials and reports written by a particular newspaper's correspondents are written from a specific viewpoint and for a specific audience.
This is where the real value of ireland.com lies and is why it makes sense to charge a reasonable fee for access. Others may be happy trying to assemble a varied collection of wire stories into a coherent picture of what's going on but I have better things to do with my time and don't mind paying a subscription.
The other point is that we are in the middle of a technological revolution. Just as it took 40 years for the invention of electricity to improve manufacturing productivity, it has taken since the 1950s for computers to finally start to change the way we live and work. I haven't even seen a printed copy of The Irish Times for over a year now and to me the daily print run is a waste of trees.
I intend to buy one more paper copy so that many years from now I will be able to shock my wide-eyed grandchildren with it, along with patient explanations of telephone books, vinyl records, travel agents, record companies, national airlines and other aspects of 20th-century life which will vanish over the next 30 years. - Yours, etc.,
DAVID ROLFE, Walnut Creek, California, USA.
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Sir, - Niall O'Donoghue (May 16th) suggests that subscribers generally pay a flat monthly or annual fee to the Internet service provider for time spent on line. That may be, but such an option is only currently available to a minority in Ireland. I personally spent the better part of €100 on dial-up Internet access charges in the past month, so I strongly resent being told that this is "not an issue". - Yours, etc.,
RICHARD BANNISTER, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2.