> Is simply saying “anyone who pays has access” enough to qualify as public? No because someone has to set the price, which is just an indirect method of cont

> Is simply saying “anyone who pays has access” enough to qualify as public? No because someone has to set the price, which is just an indirect method of controlling who has access. > the restaurant model is also fine It works for restaurants because there is competition. The whole point here is that web crawling/caching is a natural monopoly. A better analogy here would be Apple's app store, or copyrighted standards with the force of law [1]. These nominally follow the "anyone who pays has access" model but they are not public, and the result is the same set of problems. [1] https://www.thebrandprotectionblog.com/public-laws-private-standards-copyright-fair-use/ https://www.thebrandprotectionblog.com/public-laws-private-s...