Content Sites Vexed By Password Abuse The high cost of subscribers sharing log-ons By Whit Andrews Playboy magazine even has a term for it: "frat-house syndrome." Just as readers might pass around a magazine or a copy of a newsletter among themselves-- why buy multiple copies when you can see it after the guy down the hall is finished?-- Internet users often freely share access to their electronic subscriptions. The difference is that the number of people who can use a magazine or newsletter simultaneously is finite--limited to, say, a workgroup or the number of people who can comfortably fit onto a couch. On the Web, that expands to the number of people worldwide who can hunker in front of their monitors, printers, and personal digital assistants. "We did have one situation where a person posted a link to a story, and with it a user ID and password, on the Web, so people could get into it," said Tom Baker, business director of The Wall Street Journal Interactive edition. "He just thought it was an interesting story." Baker said that user seemed somewhat naive about the profound flouting of copyright law in which he was engaging, and several content providers have reported similar anecdotes involving clueless users. "I even have people we do business with say, 'Oh yeah, I got a password for our office,'" said Kenneth Dotson, vice president of marketing at SportsLine USA Inc., a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based sports site with members-only content areas. "I've had that happen two or three times now." The problem of subscribers treating their privileges as a commodity that they can give away is particularly vexing to Web content sites, which have in most cases crossed a difficult hurdle in graduating to a model supported at least to some extent by subscription fees. Losing those usually low fees to user abuse is thus doubly frustrating. "We're here trying to make money," said Jay Froscheiser, corporate Webmaster at Data Transmission Network Corp., an Omaha, Neb., online service creating new products on the Web with prices ranging from $20 to $50 monthly for access. "Serving 10 people on an account, we can't make money." DTN's solution is to use cookies, the tidbits of information that sites can store in browser files to track users' preferences and identities. If subscribers want to change browsers or access information from a different computer, they have to call DTN and set up the switch. Froscheiser said some subscribers complain that the system is too Draconian. For example, while many of the farmers who use agricultural information services have only one computer to work with, others whose work situations make them more itinerant are frustrated by their inability to log on from home, work, and elsewhere. But without exact statistics, it's DTN that is inconvenienced, because its deals with content providers are generally based on the number of subscribers who access the providers' services through DTN, Froscheiser said. "We have to have 100 percent accountability for how many people per service there are." Other content providers, whose prices are generally lower and are often defrayed by advertising to generate revenues, have adopted innovative ways to lure subscription cheats into ponying up the price to join. SportsLine, for instance, automatically enters members in all giveaways and promotions, whereas casual users have to key in their information manually. Subscribers can personalize their pages to allow them to follow special sports and teams. Dotson said such gentle measures are intended to make it more attractive to be a member than to use someone else's account, and are the only step likely for the company, at least into the near future. "The environment of the Web doesn't really allow you to police it," he said, and after all, the company has enough of a revenue stream from ads to make extra users less of a burden. "We say, 'Okay, not much we can do about it, we'll just enjoy the extra page views.' " sitewide licenses Other companies whose information is more likely to be passed among office workers who share business interests rather than sports conversations are aggressively pursuing sitewide licenses and lower prices. The Wall Street Journal Interactive offers deals to offices that allow users to sign up, not with a credit-card number, but with a company ID number. Lexis-Nexis does not allow individual licenses, but prices its Web services based on how many people there are in the office instead. All of the content providers agreed that they would prefer other methods of controlling distribution, but that barring technological advances of significant proportion, they're stuck with what they've got. "Our strategy is not to implement a solution that's worse than the problem," said Wall Street Journal Interactive's Baker of encrypted document schemes and micropayment models. "If there were a way to protect our information that didn't put an onerous restriction on our subscribers reading it, we'd do it." Eileen Kent, vice president, new media division of Playboy Enterprises Inc. in Chicago, echoed the sentiment. Until technology improves, she said, content providers need to assume that there will be some improper use of memberships. "I think the technology will find solutions," she said. "But until then, it's just a cost of doing business." ______________________________________________________________ Reprinted from Web Week, Volume 3, Issue 4, February 17, 1997 ) Mecklermedia Corp. All rights reserved. Keywords: content electronic_commerce Date: 19970217 http://www.iworld.com