::scr paying for it

[jo walsh]

_Dave wrote:
> http://www.theendoffree.com/ is documenting all the sites that move to
> pay.

um, their point being? i don't get it. a bland collation of press
releases, many headlines verbatim from thereg. ah well, their freedom to
spend their time and bandwidth-money on the exercise. 

simon w wrote:
> The whole thought of paying for stuff online makes me shiver.

here, have a warm wet blanket and a mug of pony juice.   

one of my @previous_employers is a deeply reasonable bloke who has given
an awful lot of time, bandwidth-money and energy to supporting a free
community uk-guide site, almost untouched for the last seven years. [0]
they've also spent the last four years, and again a lot of staff time and
energy, running a free and well-respected music review site. it would
be pollyannaish to say these things werent set up without revenue
generation in the long distance view. the general economic situation
dictates that this is turned around now. this is a small company of
non-money-grubbing people. can you really have expected anyone else not to
think the same way? 

i subscribe to salon. i'd happily pay for theonion, ntk, the guardian - or
hell the telegraph according to personal preference - or exceprts of
thereg. i'd pay a penny per streetmap lookup. frankly a micropayment or
subscription service makes more sense to me than the current
tipping/honour situation that seems so prevalent right now, where the
conscientious few sustain the diffident greed of the many. 

so, maybe we go back to a situation where state-financed academic,
technical and cultural information is free, and the other information is
not. but hell, seven or ten years ago that other information wasnt there,
and the net was no less interesting for it. oo, so pay-for services will
stop me reading slashdot, blogspace, livejournal, from receiving all that
lovely shiny email from another.com and hotmail users. what on earth will
i do to fill those extra two hours a day? how will i fill that yearning
intellectual void? 

the arguments in favour of payment from an intelligent businessperson are
inexorably compelling. in particular from my $previous_employer whose
sureness compelled an ex cow orker of mine to declare on another mailing
list (not verbatim, sorry no reference)
"if you're not prepared to pay for it, it's probably not worth reading"
that still reads like a troll to me, but maybe so does yours and this.

z
      

[0] http://www.knowhere.co.uk