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Seeking elusive profits in a shaky market, free Internet access service provider Juno has changed its service agreement, requiring customers to let it use their PCs during the downtimes when a screen saver might run.

Juno wants to sell the unused processing power of its customers' PCs to companies that need to crunch through a lot of data. It would divide up the task across hundreds or thousands of systems, providing power equivalent to that of a supercomputer.

Juno's plan is angering some customers, despite the company's insistence that such a project would begin on a voluntary basis. Most customer response is positive, says Gary Baker, Juno's senior vice president. Obviously, that could change should the project become mandatory.

Juno has begun sending its customers a change in the terms of its service plan. Their agreement is presumed if they continue to use the service.

"Atrocious agreement," reads the subject line of an e-mail message to PC World from reader John Marson, who pays about $10 monthly for Juno's premium service (the current rate is $15). Marson's e-mail was one of a handful received by PC World this week.

"Its draconian terms will lose Juno a lot of customers," Marson goes on to say. "If they insist on enforcing it, I will be looking for a new ISP."

Ron Levesque is one such customer. After repeated attempts to contact Juno with questions about the revised agreement, he writes PC World: "I think I'll be leaving Juno online service for someone else."

Borrowing Your PC

The revised agreement, received by some customers last week, states that Juno can download computational components to customers' PCs for use in its upcoming Juno Virtual Supercomputer Project, Baker says.

Juno will use volunteers to test the system's capabilities, Baker says. The company will seek interested users in coming weeks, and will begin the project shortly thereafter.

If the idea has legs, and companies are willing to pay Juno for access to the processing power of its "supercomputer," participation may become mandatory for free-access customers, he says. Linking computers together in this manner is called distributed computing.

Distributed computing splits the computational duties for massive amounts of data among dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of computers. These systems crunch the data when the PCs are on, but not in use; when the tasks are completed, they send back the results. The popular SETI@Home uses volunteer-based distributed computing to analyze data in its search for extraterrestrial life. You need only download a client program that acts as a screen saver to donate PC cycles to the SETI project.

Juno Sets the Terms

Baker insists the project will be voluntary at first, and says the new terms of agreement must be broad to encompass all future possibilities. However, the agreement clearly leaves Juno customers little room for recourse--aside from quitting the service--if the company decides to make the project mandatory.

For example, one excerpt of section 2.5 of the revised Service Agreement states, "You expressly permit and authorize Juno to (i) download to your computer one or more pieces of software (the "Computational Software") designed to perform computations, which may be unrelated to the operation of the Service, on behalf of Juno (or on behalf of such third parties as may be authorized by Juno, subject to the Privacy Statement), (ii) run the Computational Software on your computer to perform and store the results of such computations, and (iii) upload such results to Juno's central computers during a subsequent connection, whether initiated by you in the course of using the Service or by the Computational Software as further described below."

The agreement goes on to say that Juno can require its customers to leave their PCs on at all times. The company notes, however, that it is up to the customers to foot the extra expenses associated with leaving their PC running all the time.

Keeping Free Service Free?

Since Juno launched in 1996 as a free e-mail service, more than 14 million people have signed up, Baker says. Today, the company has more than 4 million active members; most have the free Internet service, he says.

Despite its substantial customer base, and the advertisements served to its nonpaying subscribers, Juno has yet to turn a profit, Baker says. That's one reason the company is exploring distributed computing, he adds.

"Free Internet service is a more valuable commodity than it was six months ago," he says, noting the demise of several free Internet service providers in recent months. Other free services are also adding restrictions to try to reap profits.

"Ads for access isn't good enough. The prime purpose here has to be to provide people a migration path to paid service," he says. Roughly 860,000 of the company's current paying customers once used its free service, he says. In lieu of forcing everyone to pay for service, the company must make money elsewhere, he says.

"The person who uses a free ISP is fine with some limitations," he says. He contends this project is less intrusive than other restrictions, such as the pop-up ads Juno and other providers already use, he says.

Baker won't speculate as to whether such ads might disappear if the distributed computing project proves profitable for Juno. And the company does expect to lose some subscribers over the flap, but not very many. "Otherwise we wouldn't be doing it," Baker says.

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