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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zaruthustran" data-source="post: 3468321" data-attributes="member: 1457">I hear you. This topic was brought up in another thread; the consensus seems to be to provide full access to discrete content like PDFs, even after the subscription expires. You can then burn that content to disc, print it, stick it on a USB jump drive and carry it around, whatever. It'd be a mistake, I think, to simply rent/license such content. Compare to the other (assumed) parts of the DI, like online tools and such. That stuff makes total sense for a traditional subscription model, where you lose access once you stop paying your subscription. But yeah, you should be able to keep whatever you *buy*. I imagine they'll allow online real-time searching through old archives as part of a subscription, and then you can choose to *buy* and download/own a copy of that content for a small additional fee.eCommerce is interesting because credit card processing is a fixed cost. So even if you want to sell individual articles for, say, 10 cents apiece you can't because Visa charges the vendor a fixed amount (up to $1.50) per transaction. So the customer would pay you a dime and after it's all said and done you're down a buck forty. MS gets around the issue with Xbox Live points. It's like company scrip; the customer pays 10 real bucks (a palatable amount, given Visa's fees) and MS gives you X thousand "points". Each product costs a couple hundred points--effectively two or three dollars, but since Visa isn't involved the low purchase price is doable. So your single $10 transaction allows five "purchases" at 200 points each, at a cost to MS of only $1.50, netting $8.50. Compare to five transactions at $2.00 each, at a cost to MS of $7.50, netting $3.50. Smart of them!But that's a pretty big tangent.-z</blockquote>

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