The end of free content?
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Monday, August 25, 2025 17:37
VIEWED: 3901
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I am used to getting my mis-information, lack of information, non-information, and biased information for free. Now I have to pay for it? 
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Why don't the papers just move to the internet, and use the hulu.com model?
I watch shows on hulu, and you have to sit through commercials to do so. The good part is, they're 30-second commercials, one per commercial break. Short enough that you sit through them, not long enough for you to take a pee break or go to the fridge for more beer.
Papers could do the same thing. If you run a story across 5 "pages" on the internet, every time you click "next page", you have to sit through a commercial. They get ad revenue, you get your story, and nobody's too annoyed by either one. It seems like a workable solution to me.
Mike
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
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They have to figure out how to make money somehow and I'd rather seem them selling their services outright rather than relying on underhanded ad revenue.
It's an interesting challenge, and I'm kind of looking forward to what bubbles out of it. The thing is, if they're going to get people to pay, they'll have to start producing something worth paying for. I think it's an opportunity for real journalists to move forward and prove that have something valuable to offer. God knows they've been at a bit of a low point in terms of both quality and integrity over the last twenty years.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:
I wonder how hard it would be to generate large quantities of superficially sound but in reality bogus information?
So easy even a CGI script can do it.
Case in point - WPoison.
http://www.monkeys.com/wpoison/
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One definite factor, is people useing pop-up blockers and such to block the ads.
They poisoned themselves here - the backlash effect of using pop-ups, malware and other abusive bullshit which does harm to a customers PC, or takes control of it in a manner that is unwanted will NOT generate positive feelings toward your product, rather the opposite, and folks WILL eventually find a workaround.
How'd you like it if in the middle of your favorite program, not only did your TV run commercials, but disabled the mute button, turned the volume ALL THE WAY UP, and then loaded a script that sent you into an endless stream of commercials like that, AND changed the channel back to them no matter what you did ?
Be a bit of a pisser, wouldn't it ?
Would that make YOU fond of the advertiser or their product, eh ?
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It's not that they can't make money with online advertisements. It's that they aren't doing it right.
Exactly, and not just that, but treating your potential customers as *enemies* is one way to make them so - just look at most non-authoritarian folks reaction to DRM and the DMCA, especially when it makes USING any of that content either so inefficient and hassle filled it's not worth it, or in many cases downright impossible - my friend Donnie has NEVER gotten his Blu-Ray player to work for this very reason, and has since relegated it to the bottom of a closet.
Annnd, well, lemme offer you hard evidence, direct proof that the "lock it up and make them pay, or ELSE!" mentality is financially destructive to those who use it...
http://www.baen.com/library/
Go on, read Eric Flints rant there, and then realize that since operating the Baen Free Library, he's been *proven* absolutely right.
http://www.baen.com/library/palaver6.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baen_Free_Library
So with evidence in hand, the best model is to throw the doors wide, but greed and control issues won't let the dinosaurs running many industries admit that - and so they adapt, or die.
And as for "News" content... ha!
When people buy your "news" for information, and find out that you've lied to them, tried to manipulate them, and collaborated with an administration that wanted to reduce them to mere serfs...
And they stop buying your "news" and go to the people who DIDN'T do that...
Maybe you should look to something other than price or advertising as the cause of that exodus!
Just sayin.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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"Let them die."
- Captain Kirk
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Sarge- Basically, what you're saying is the information belongs to the rich...
Justice belongs to the rich...
Rape Victims Forced To Pay For Evidence
Victims of sexual assault are getting bills, rejection letters and pushy calls from bill collectors while a state crime victims' fund sits full of cash www.click2houston.com/news/19400415/detail.html
"Free speech" belongs to the rich...
PoliticsTV's Youtube account and all of its videos are now inaccessible
http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/2/10/114034/681
Education belongs to the rich...
The "free market" only services those with money. And since money, like power, concentrates over time, unless you devise a system which actively redistributes power - money, education, information, guns, the vote, the power of the pulpit- you will create a system of wealthy overlords. I think that you're so automatically elitist you don't even notice it.
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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy
Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Sarge- Basically, what you're saying is the information belgons to the rich.
Likr justice belongs to the rich...
You tweaking again?
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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The rich can afford Lexis Nexis searches. They can buy the insight of, and access to, TPTB. They already have channels of communication amongst themselves. The powerless- that's us- have the internet and google and access to whatever free content we can get. The so-called "free market" is NOT a panacea... it is a hurricane of money, nothing more and nothing less. EVEN IF you could raze it to the ground, it would quickly re-create a monopolistic, uneven structure. A structure which is very much at odds with the future that you envision.
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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy
Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy
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LOL
All I said is that they're going to have to rethink what they're doing if they're going to convince people to pay for it. I think that's a good thing.
Since information is readily available to anyone with an internet connection, they're going to have to work for their money. They can't just sit on their butts and regurgitate the AP wire and get paid for it. We might just see a long overdue improvement in the quality of journalism as a result.
How you get from that to your usual socialist screed is beyond me. I guess any excuse is a good one.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:The poor already do not have internet access. What access they have is thru the local public library (one of those socialist institutions). And AFA information being "readily available" (ie free) ... DUH. That was the point of the article. To keep information unavailable.
Since information is readily available to anyone with an internet connection
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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy
Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy
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