Interesting idea, but how do we solve the free rider problem?

I think there are two questions on the table. One is as to feasability -- whether or not papers can be made available online to non-AoIR members, without coercing anyone. The other is as to desireability -- whether or not it's wise to do so. 1) I addressed the first, not the second:

Despite some assertions on this list to the contrary, it takes Work to put papers online or on a CD.

Yup. Far as I understand, Work is already undertaken to put papers online, in a manner that allows AoIR members to look at them. How much extra work is required to allow non-AoIR members to look at some of them, where the authors have so designated? Well, there are a lot of variables, but it's certainly a rather different proposition than starting from scratch. 2) Now, whether or not doing this unspecified amount of extra Work is a, uh, Good Thing -- that's quite different. You write:

To add on to the Work and the expense without contributing dues to the clube

... and so the assumption is that, were some papers available widely and some only to members -- instead of all papers available only to members -- less people would contribute dues. I think you may be right. Others might disagree, and point to give-some-away-for-free as a strategy that's worked better than don't-show-anything for pay-for-content sites. Which may or may not be a valid point of comparison. The point being, the question of whether or not this is a Good Thing is much more interesting than whether or not it's a do-able thing. If authors are already submitting papers for publication online behind a password-protected site, then allowing authors to bring some of their papers out in front of the point of authentication is do-able. Being do-able doesn't mean it's what should be done, but let's separate the two. So, facilitating a public archive of AoIR conference papers on behalf of their authors, versus possible loss of the revenues required to be able to do that kind of facilitation... cheers Bram