Like so many in Silicon Valley in the 1990s, I thought the Web wouldSo, the one time author of a manifesto "Piracy Is Your Friend" now admits "I was wrong. We were all wrong." He also writes:
increase business opportunities for writers and artists. Instead they
have decreased. Most of the big names in the industry — Google,
Facebook, MySpace and increasingly even Apple and Microsoft — are
now in the business of assembling content from unpaid Internet users to
sell advertising to other Internet users....
There’s an almost religious belief in the Valley that charging
for content is bad. The only business plan in sight is ever more
advertising. One might ask what will be left to advertise once everyone
is aggregated.
To help writers and artists earn a living online, software engineersIt is an exaggeration, there are other factors at work (as I have argued in "Back to the Future: Virtual Theologising as Recapitulation" Colloquium, 2005, 37,2, 115-130.), but it is an exaggeration that points towards truth. If the digerati agreed, and convinced the big holders of "content" the movie distributors, TV companies, music labels, "timeless" magazine publishers (things like National Geographic and others whose content does not date fast)... we could have a system that allows a very small charge to access, widespread acceptance, and the new age of digital creativity could begin.
and Internet evangelists need to exercise the power they hold as
designers. Information is free on the Internet because we created the
system to be that way.
In the mean time we are stuck with more and more intrusive advertising or with producing "labours of love" in our "spare time" :(
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Hi Tim,
I've got to admit that I am starting to feel some discomfort about 'free' on the Web. It is an unsustainable future, particularly if we value quality of content and the efforts of those who need to be reimbursed in order to contribute their work. How long before we see the Web 2.0 crash? How long until adopting various free Web 2.0 technologies becomes too risky to justify for institutions such as ours, because the server could be pulled offline at any time?
I'm continuing to wonder... Revenue streams from *free* services is likely to become a major issue in the years ahead.
By 
Nichthus, at
November 30, 2007 9:20 AM
Hi, Mark,
Web 0.95 in the Dot Com bust demonstrated that "free" is not a viable business model. Up to now the only real alternative though is advertising. This (it seems from where I sit) could go two very different ways:
(i) people become inured to ubiquitous adverts, which therefore get more subtle (in order to be "seen") and we cease to be able to distinguish ad from editorial (to use old media terms)
(ii) people continue to hate them and move from trying to ignore them to doing like my son and installing effective ad-blockers - in which case the "model" fails
Both have already begun... but micro-payments are still not on the horizon...
By Tim, at
November 30, 2007 9:54 AM
PS, there is no necessary connection between Web 2.0 and "free" one could have user-generated content, etc. in a subscription system IF ONLY people/we could learn to pay for services online ;-)
By Tim, at
November 30, 2007 9:56 AM
