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The End of Free
The Atlantic has up an insightful piece from its print edition called Closing the Digital Frontier. Michael Hirschorn takes readers through a jaundiced version of the familiar story of the rise and dominance of the "Information wants to be free" meme, then claims that the era of freedom is now over. "...the phrase Information wants to be free... became perhaps the most powerful meme of the past quarter century; so powerful, in fact, that multibillion-dollar corporations destroyed their own businesses at its altar. ... But now, it seems, things are changing all over again. The shift of the digital frontier from the Web, where the browser ruled supreme, to the smart phone, where the app and the pricing plan now hold sway, signals a radical shift from openness to a degree of closed-ness that would have been remarkable even before 1995. ... It’s far from a given that this shift will generate the kinds of revenue media companies are used to: for under-30s whelped on free content, the prospect of paying hundreds or thousands of dollars yearly for print, audio, and video (on expensive new devices that require paying AT&T $30 a month) is not going to be an easy sell. Yet lack of uptake by young people will hardly stop the rush to apps. There’s too much potential upside."
"Yet lack of uptake by young people will hardly stop the rush to apps. There’s too much potential upside."
Eh? I thought the entire drive behind the iphone and the appstore is young people... without them apple wouldnt be making money hand over fist, and not everyone and their grandma would be building apps to 'get rich quick'TM
If young people didnt care about apps, no one would make them, since there wouldnt be any benefit to doing so at all.
People, what a bunch of bastards
Smart phones in general, and the iPad more pointedly, are not driven by search.
I use my iPhone primarily for searching Google -- that's probably what I most use it for. If I'm watching a movie, reading a book, talking to someone, and I want to know some bit of information about the topic, I Google it on my phone and then view the relevant content in the browser. Of course, there is an app for that, but why would I want to install a dozen different applications (IMDB, Wikipedia etc.) when I can Google it and get the results on one page. Google is pretty good at providing what I need. I have no doubt, however, that other people use these individual apps to find the information they need. I guess it's a matter of preference.
If you want to know why the "Information wants to be free" attitude is dying, it is because the Internet has been taken over by business interests; the original network of academics and hackers is just a tiny fraction of what the Internet has now become. Most of the people on the Internet have no interest in freedom, they just want to go to some large business' website and do whatever it is that they do there.
Palm trees and 8
Every single media provider who started to charge for content has lost out. New York Times is a great example. They've had to reduce prices again and again and again and still have trouble.
The second a news story is out, someone reproduces it. It's no longer about content ownership, it's who can get it out, correct and in a format people like FIRST.
Look at music... who won that one? Itunes. They got it out in a method and format faster and better than anyone. Now... admittedly there might have been better services but they didn't offer the library that itunes can. (I hate itunes before anyone passes judgment).
What the market is proving is that people have a threshold for payment on content. The majority of us it's around $10 for movies (that's when sales peak in numbers other than first release) on DVD's, for music it's around $15 for a full CD, 75 to 99 cents for an individual song... and so on. News media, it's 0. There are a small few of us that then replicate this news (to the media companies horror) to the wide audiences. The author things this will stop... and of course has no true understanding of the market.
Information is easier to share than at any other point in history. News is replicated and spread in seconds now, and people, not just the young kids, are used to it for FREE. The only way this "may" be possible is if every single news media group put up walls at the same time... AND noone found a way to bypass this. It's just not feasible.
The most impact this can possible have is a lag in news release in the hours. It's like the RIAA... it's an antiquated business model that doesn't work anymore. The times have changed so that content en masse is no longer valuable, just the content itself. Good news, strong stories... well written... that's what matters now.
Welcome to the 21st century.
The shift of the digital frontier from the Web, where the browser ruled supreme, to the smart phone, where the app and the pricing plan now hold
The article confuses apps, Internet connections, with paying for media. On the desktop, it's long been the case that people pay for software (despite the useful presence of free software). And people pay for their Internet connection.
Similarly with phones - people pay for applications, they pay for their connection.
And the problem on the desktop isn't that people are unwilling to pay for media, it's that it often isn't available. Can I get TV on demand online for a charge? Not as far as I know in the UK. So I've no doubt that people will pay money for an app that gives them TV on a phone, but they would do so on the desktop too.
Where pay-for media is struggling is news. Are people more like to pay to read a newspaper on their 5800 than on their Intel Windows PC?
They are operating on the largely correct assumption that people will be more likely to pay for consumer-friendly apps via the iPad, and a multitude of competing devices due out this year
Ah yes, a multitude of computing devices (laptops, netbooks, tablets, PMPs, phones), but let's give the obligitary product placement to the Ipad. Do we really think that most people will be walking around with an Ipad? And are netbook users etc going to start paying for content?
And with Apple in the driver's seat
Hah. Thankfully - given the article's valid concerns about their closed policy - this isn't remotely true when we look in terms of things like market share. Though no doubt I predict plenty of replies arguing until they're blue in the face that they are (or redefining market share to use some arbitrary criteria where they are first).
Twitter, like other recent-vintage social networks, is barely bothering with its Web site; its smart-phone app is more fully featured. The independent TweetDeck, which collates feeds across multiple social networks, is not browser-based.
This sort of thing is hardly new, nor necessarily a bad thing. Years ago, people used Usenet clients. Many people still use email clients. Sites like LiveJournal have downloadable clients for desktop platforms. It goes without saying that the software versions are more featured - otherwise what would be the point of them. We didn't have hip names for them like "apps", but it's the same thing, long before people started using their phones.
But again, the article is conflating different issues - the technology (website versus software) with the idea of free content. Is anyone going to pay to read Twitter feeds, despite its use of apps?
If you go back to the actual quote,
http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/IWtbF.html
cue twenty-five years later, the first part of the quote being widely forgotten, and an army of too-smart-for-you opionators attacking their own mis-quote using the original quote's argument as their justification for why it is wrong.
It really makes you wonder what the non-populistized seventeen people later word of mouth versions of the original western religious texts were actually trying to say..
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
That a lot of "Free" stuff also turns out to be crap. Therefore the hidden cost is the time it takes in sorting out the good free stuff from the crap. With payware certain standards are expected - or even enforced by third parties (ie an app store). In cases where some crapware does find its way into that third party store, usually there is someone to complain to and the crapware is removed quickly.
It's the old argument of "I can't be bothered to do it myself". It's why we have politicians. It's why we have religions and "gods". Because we prefer to have 'someone else' to delegate certain fears and worries to (even if that 'someone else' turns out to be corrupt in the case of politicians and clerics, or even non-existent in the case of gods). Humans are funny that way.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I quite clearly remember paying $20/month for unlimited dialup in the mid 90s
With inflation, $20 in 1995 would be around $28 today, which is comparable to the $30 a month data charge for a smartphone. And of course, even today's wireless access is generally faster than dialup was in the mid 1990's.
Also, $30 may be your monthly data charge, but AT&T really forces you to pay something like $60/month as a minimum for iPhone service. That's far from a trivial cost for the vast majority of people.
Yes. And in the mid 1990's, you had to have telephone service in order to take advantage of dialup internet providers like AOL. That would have run you at least $20 a month in most markets. Then, if you made a standard amount of long distance calls (including "local" long distance in most large metro areas), you were looking at at least another $20 a month in LD charges. That's $40 for your phone, or about $55 in 2010 money. At $60 a month your cell phone provides you with hundreds of minutes of free long distance calling (unlimited in the late evenings and on weekends) in addition to the convenience of wireless. Not bad for about five extra dollars a month.
Apparently, the "consumers" are like grass: just an infinite [1] supply of fodder to be exploited, with all the decisions being made for us up the food chain.
[1] I live in the West, and see on a regular basis how infinite that "sea of grass" really wasn't.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Wireless internet access rates are slowly creeping upward. I can only speak to T-mobile as an example, but my blackberry plan was $20/mo. The switch to G1 added $5/mo as my choices were $25/mo without texting or $35/mo with, but that plan is shared with a family plan for voice minutes. Fast forward one year and the carrier discounted Nexus requires an individual plan that totals $70/mo. I paid full price on my Nexus One just to keep my old, cheaper plan. My friend who just bought a Sprint EVO found Sprint charges $29.99/mo for data, but require a separate tethering up-charge to boot, so Sprint is even more expensive than T-Mobile.
Don't get me wrong - the utility of these phone is such that you are practically carrying a laptop around, but the American data plans are so expensive I'm seriously considering the move from early adopter (owner of a development G1) back to prepaid dumb phone after years of carrying smart phones. A $20 phone with a $100/1000 minute prepaid sim is starting to look pretty good next to a $120/mo cell phone bill.
Disclaimer: I havent RTFA yet, and sometimes the summaries don't accurately reflact their FAs. But from the summary, TFA seems particularly clueless. First, "Information wants to be free" is IMO clueless in itself. Information doesn't want to be free any more than your doorknob wants to be free. You could as easily say "Information wants to be paid for". But when information isn't free, neither are you.
Second, "The shift of the digital frontier from the Web, where the browser ruled supreme, to the smart phone, where the app and the pricing plan now hold sway" is just as clueless. The internet is the internet, whether you're accessing it from your phone or your PC. Few have 4G smartphones. Mine isn't 4G, but it will access the internet, and guess what? There are tons of free apps for it. And an iPhone is 4G, but 4G isn't iPhone any more than a four legged animal is a dog. Apple has always been a walled garden, and that's how Apple customers like it. But most of us aren't Apple customers.
It's far from a given that this shift will generate the kinds of revenue media companies are used to
Who gives two shits whether or not media companies get revenue? I don't, and neither should anyone not invested in media company stock. I'm sick of the corporate whores and the corporate media they own turning the world into a bunch of money worshiping greedheads who believe "free=worthless". The best things in life are free: Sunsets, air, rain, FOSS, indie music, walking hand in hand with your S.O., playing catch with your grandchild, etc. Nothing you can buy holds a candle to any of these. Windows is far inferior to Linux, which isn't only free as in beer but gives one true computing freedom.
And I find it fascinating that the corporate media usually refuses to even mention FOSS. We nerds are the only ones who know about Linux; when I mention to normal people that they can replace Windows with an OS that costs nothing and is free from viruses, and there is an office suite that is likewise free, and free media playes that are superior to WiMP, they're astounded.
Now to a response to your comment about "The only question now is who will own" the web, personally I think the question is ludicrously meaningless, not important. Nobody owns it, and nobody will. It's free.
I look forward to free internet access for all, free of corporate robber barons and gatekeeprs, a mesh network where everyone opens up access to everyone else. It's doable and should be done, and I think we here at slashdot are the ones to start it. As to "the government", which government? It's a world wide web, not an American corporate web.
Free Martian Whores!
If you want to know why the "Information wants to be free" attitude is dying, it is because the Internet has been taken over by business interests; the original network of academics and hackers is just a tiny fraction of what the Internet has now become.
If you want to know why that happened, look at the post-1996 audience for the internet: people who would otherwise be watching television.
They're looking for entertainment and socialization, not "information" in the colloquial sense of knowledge-bearing data.
Futurist Traditionalism
Free TV is not dead. Get a $20 antenna, and you can get nice 1920x1080 HD TV off the air for *gasp* free.
People who don;t remember history are doomed to repeat it.
Back in the previous century, people were claiming that the Internet would have to go to a paid-content model because there was no way that it could remain free. It's still mostly free, because any time that someone tries to erect a pay-wall, someone else says "here's my chance to take away their customers."
What would happen tomorrow if 99% of all web sites went to a paywall? The 1% that didn't would replace them as THE top sites within a day.
It's the same thing with anything else, including mobile apps. The free ones are often better than the paid ones, and the price is right.
The article is wishful thinking ... just like Kevin McBride, when he says
ChinAmerica - part 2
Guess who now has the second-most IP addresses in the world? China. And they have more people with cell phones than the entire US population - and that number is increasing. Put up too many pay-walls, and China and India, which together have more than 1/3 the worlds' population, will p0wn your ass!
Don't think it can happen? GM already sells more cars in China than in the US.
>>>Free TV is not dead. Get a $20 antenna, and you can get nice 1920x1080 HD TV off the air for *gasp* free.
(1) I said "dying" not dead. (2) You've not heard the news? FCC's Broadband Plan will sell off the remaining TV channels to ATT, Verizon, and other cellular companies, and Obama has announced he fully supports the plan and wants to implement it ASAP. (3) No free TV won't be completely dead, but with only 5-6 channels left per city it might as well will be.
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>>>What would happen tomorrow if 99% of all web sites went to a paywall?
You are correct in your previous analysis, but they aren't erecting the paywall at the website because they know it would fail. They are erecting it at your home by basically forcing you to subscribe to ATT/comcast/whoever to get your television or news or internet. The free services are slowly but surely getting destroyed by the FCC and the corporations it serves.
I fully expect that by 2020 I'll either have a ~$100/month bill to see videos, or else have no access to them. It's ridiculous.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"In a smart essay in the journal Fast Capitalism in 2005, Jack Shuler shows how similar the rhetoric of the 1990s digital frontier was to that of the 19th-century frontier era."
That may be true. But there is an important difference the article does not see. The 19th-century frontier may have "seemed" infinite, but the information space (or noosphere) is for all practical purposes infinite.
What many corporations try to do is block the access to that infinite space, and make us forget that it exists. And make us pay to access their walled-in spaces.
They might still succeed, but only through "legal" trickery, not because of any natural limitation, such as the large but finite area or the "west".
>>>With inflation, $20 in 1995 would be around $28 today, which is comparable to the $30 a month data charge for a smartphone.
Instead of comparing the present to the ancient technological past when 28k was considered "fast" and a ~0.1 gigahertz processor was standard, how about comparing the present to the present?
$50 for cellular internet; capped at a mere 5-10 gigabytes
$15-20 for DSL with no cap (or cable with 250GB cap)
$7 for dialup with no cap
$0 for over-the-air television (6000 gigabytes per channel)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall