Did anyone notice that the the major news sites took the web bugs off of their pages almost immediately? They've been coming back slowly, but I wonder what kind of hell this has been causing the web-buggers...
And while you're at it, write to Laura Bush. I'd bet the First Lady has some influence in Washington. As a former librarian, I'm sure she's going to be pretty sympathetic to the needs of our nations libraries.
The problem with charging for web content is that standard economic rules don't apply. The fundamental problem of economics is the allocation of scarce resources (to call this oversimplification would be an understatement). Charging for web content is like trying to charge people for sunlight--they're not going to pay a particular person for content because it's everywhere.
This leads in to my second point. Web content is nonunique. While the delivery may differ from site to site, the nature of the content related to most topics is interchangeable.
Let's face it: most of the stuff on the web, including this post, is crap. If a user can produce their own crap, they're not going to pay for anyone else's (unless we're talking about eBay).
With most web content being bountiful, nonunique, and shitty, there's no way users are going to pay for it.
Take Slashdot for example. There is no shortage of Slashdot. There are hundreds of other Slashdot-like products on the internet. Slashdot isn't exactly high quality. All of the other Slashdots are free. Charge for one, and users go to another. My theory is that people will pay for a site that has unique, high quality information.
Slashdot Mirror
Step 6: How will this improve pr0n (the engineers will also be worried about this one)?
Did anyone notice that the the major news sites took the web bugs off of their pages almost immediately? They've been coming back slowly, but I wonder what kind of hell this has been causing the web-buggers...
And while you're at it, write to Laura Bush. I'd bet the First Lady has some influence in Washington. As a former librarian, I'm sure she's going to be pretty sympathetic to the needs of our nations libraries.
The problem with charging for web content is that standard economic rules don't apply. The fundamental problem of economics is the allocation of scarce resources (to call this oversimplification would be an understatement). Charging for web content is like trying to charge people for sunlight--they're not going to pay a particular person for content because it's everywhere.
This leads in to my second point. Web content is nonunique. While the delivery may differ from site to site, the nature of the content related to most topics is interchangeable.
Let's face it: most of the stuff on the web, including this post, is crap. If a user can produce their own crap, they're not going to pay for anyone else's (unless we're talking about eBay).
With most web content being bountiful, nonunique, and shitty, there's no way users are going to pay for it.
Take Slashdot for example. There is no shortage of Slashdot. There are hundreds of other Slashdot-like products on the internet. Slashdot isn't exactly high quality. All of the other Slashdots are free. Charge for one, and users go to another. My theory is that people will pay for a site that has unique, high quality information.