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Free Web Content a "Myth," Claims Barry Diller
BotScout writes "Following in the footsteps of other traditional media executives who just don't get it, Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, said web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, and that's that. The media and technology executive said it's 'mythology' to view the Internet as a system of free communications. 'It is not free, and is not going to be,' Diller said yesterday at the Fortune Brainstorm conference in Pasadena, California. Companies from Disney to New York Times Co. are seeking ways to extract revenue from the Internet. The latter recently said that it's considering a $5 monthly fee for access to its namesake newspaper's web site."
I say let the big companies lock out their content. It just helps smaller content producers find their niche and make some money through sponsorships and advertisements.
People paying for content is not the issue here. Execs thinking that a for-pay service in a world of for-free services will be viable is. There will always be a free alternative and that is where people will go.
People like Mr. Diller believe that if everybody gets together and starts charging for content then consumers will have no choice but to pay up.
The fact is there will always be a free alternative. I'm not saying there isn't or won't be a market for premium content.
Just that there will always be free. Free-as-in-beer and hopefully free-as-in-speech.
Barry misunderstands the BASIC transaction basis of currently-free media (like TV): the ADVERTISERS are his customers, the VIEWERS EYES AND ATTENTION is what he's selling and the 'content' is merely bait to attract and hold the viewers for as long as possible.
So in a sense, he's stating categorically that fish are going to need to pay to enjoy the worms hanging on those hooks.
It's quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
And, for what it's worth? "Disney, the world's biggest media company, is developing a subscription-based product for the Internet, Iger said..." Disney: really good content producer, really BAD at predicting how they can exploit the viewers. I recall them saying categorically that Disney movies would NEVER be released in DVD format (for fear of piracy) and then they did release in a dvd format...DIVX. Everyone remember what a huge success that was?
No, if Disney's working on a 'subscription' internet, I'm going to bet strongly that they'll be wrong.
-Styopa
Actually he's right in one respect... The internet ISN'T free. Someone IS going to pay for it. It just wont be me.
People will only pay for something they can't otherwise get for free within a reasonable amount of time or with a reasonable amount of effort.
...Multi-Millionaire CEO's of International corps know EXACTLY what the little guy scraping by on minimum wage actually wants and needs...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Agreed. Greywolf's Corollary to the Streisand Effect: As long as someone else has the same content available for free, users will go there instead of to your site, given the choice.
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Are a lot of local newspapers going out of business because the Internet has destroyed the model of simply reprinting the AP feed in order to sell classified ads? Absolutely. You can get the AP feed from tons of web sites, and classified ads have been taken over by Craigslist.
Maybe AP content will continue to be free on the web, if enough web sites see a traffic boost from it worth the cost of subscribing, then the cost of generating AP content can be kept low by spreading it across many web sites, and end users won't have to bear it.
But Diller is absolutely right that premium content will be paid for one way or another. There is simply no model right now that supports the free distribution of movies that cost $140 million to make and would additional require huge amounts of bandwidth to distribute. There is no model that will support free access to quality content like the Christian Science Monitor, The Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker, or Wall Street Journal.
Music may be an exception to this. Bands may make enough money from touring to view albums as free advertising. And music production has come down so much in cost that there may be enough people creating music that the supply essentially prevents anyone from charging for it.
Nevertheless, I think Diller is absolutely right that we are moving away from the free model for many types of content. The free content to generate advertising model has been tried twice now, and it's failed miserably both times.
Do me a favor and call me when someone posts a home-made movie on YouTube that is, I dunno, let's say 10% as well-made, written, and acted as Star Trek.
People are willfully misrepresenting what Diller is saying. Diller is a media executive. He's not talking about Slashdot or your blog. Believe me, Diller doesn't give a shit if you keep posting reviews of local restaurants or Linux tips on your own web site, just like media executives 20 years ago wouldn't give a shit about a local church newsletter.
What Diller is talking about are things that are not so easily produced by "a thousand people putting out far more content for nothing." And the truth is, 1,000 people putting out content for nothing are still not going to produce Up!, or put out a daily newspaper with world-wide investigative reporting.
His point is that there are too many of those "premium content" services chasing too few advertising dollars to be free. Just like cable or print newspapers, we're going to need to move to a mixed advertising and fee-for-service model.
Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that all the websites out there started charging the eminently "reasonable" $5/month for access to content. In truth, it is likely that sites run by the likes of Barry Diller will charge decidedly more than this.
Before the economic collapse, I had a monthly books/CDs/entertainment budget of, say, $150. After the collapse, that budget is closer to $40. Assuming that I choose to spend 100% of my discretionary income on nothing but paid websites, and assuming that these will all be the cheapest, $5/month websites, that gets me eight websites, out of all the sites available on the Internet. I might as well shut down my browser and head to my library to peruse some dead trees.
I can't be the only person like this. Mark my words: the Internet will route around this damage.
"Imaginary solutions to real problems."
He seems to be making the fundamental error of forgetting what internet content supply and demand look like. There is a near infinite (for practical purposes, anyway) number of content providers - original artists and authors, megacorporations, aggregators, bloggers, "pirates", amateur-gone-semi-pro porn stars, etc., because the internet enables us all to be publishers in some way. Also, each content provider has the ability to cross traditional geographical market boundaries easily, and serve a huge number of customers. The result is that although the signal-to-noise ratio may suck sometimes, there is such a broad amount of content and distribution is so trivial, that the supply side of the graph is completely out of whack - it approaches $0 for infinite content. Which oddly enough, is where most of us like it.
Traditional supply and demand only work in a market where there is a relatively limited number of players who control the product, and supply is limited by traditional manufacturing and distribution.
I am sure that in his position he sees clearly the cost of producing content that others consume essentially for free, but it does not automatically follow from that that many consumers in the market are willing to pay what he wants. Bitch-slapping your customers with rhetoric like his doesn't help either.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
You're paying for it right now. It's called an internet connection.
But any attempts to charge beyond that seemed to be doomed to failure.
"Quality content" like the Christian Science Monitor? I've never read it, but I would be very skeptical of anything coming from that group. Maybe the editors just pray good articles will show up.
As you have stated, you never read it.
Pulling from Wikipedia:
* 1950, Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting: Edmund Stevens, For his series of 43 articles written over a three-year residence in Moscow entitled, "This Is Russia Uncensored."
* 1967, Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting: R. John Hughes, For his thorough reporting of the attempted Transition to the New Order in 1965 and the purge that followed in 1965-66.
* 1968, Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting: Howard James, for his series of articles, Crisis in the Courts.
* 1969, Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting: Robert Cahn, for his inquiry into the future of our national parks and the methods that may help to preserve them.
* 1978, Pulitzer Prize Special Citations and Awards, Journalism: Richard Strout, for distinguished commentary from Washington over many years as staff correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and contributor to The New Republic.
* 1996, Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting: David Rohde, for his persistent on-site reporting of the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.
* 2002, Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning: Clay Bennett
Aside from a requirement (tradition?) to run one religious article in the paper at the founder's request, it isn't a religious paper.
You may actually want to read it, as ignorance is never pretty.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
A lot of this idiocy comes from the use of the metaphor "content". If music and other artistic works were called what they are -- *expressions of human creativity -- a lot of this would go away.
It's obvious, of course, that people generally don't make objects, products, "contents" (of containers, presumably) and hand them over to others without getting paid for them.
But the idea that people will not express themselves creatively -- will not write, sing, and talk about the things that are important to them -- without getting paid for it is .. um.. less obvious*
*i.e. false
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love