Few things in life are free - one of the great exceptions has been the Internet.
Once the cost of Internet connection is paid, all but the most specialised databases of information were available to find.
But can it be supported? Will we see a paid model for content?
Rupert Murdoch has flagged that payment for news content online is
just around the corner:
Mr Murdoch, who has announced plans to charge readers of his publications online, also said “you're going to have to pay for your favourite newspaper on the web”.
The days of free news online were “going to stop,” he said.
“I believe newspapers will be selling subscriptions on the web,” he said.
“A (newspaper) website will be vastly improved, much more in them and you'll pay for them.
“There's a case that newspapers rushing on to the web to try and get a bigger audience and get more attention for themselves have damaged themselves,” he said.
“Now they're going to have to pull back from that and say `Hey, we're going to charge for this'.”
Going a step further is
Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive of IAC, the interactive services company which operates a collection of more than 30 Internet sites which produce $1.5 billion a year in revenue.
“I absolutely believe the Internet is passing from its free days into a paid system. Inevitably, I promise you, it will be paid,” Diller said in a keynote discussion opening up the Advertising 2.0 conference held at his company’s futuristic glass building alongside the Hudson River in Manhattan. “Not every single thing, but anything of value.“
The fact that content and services on the Internet so far have been largely supplied for no charge is “an accident of historical moment that will be corrected,” he said, in an era of “creative chaos” that will span the next three to five years.
Remembering that use of ATMs was once completely free, as was having a bank account, there may be some merit in the claim.
It does raise an interesting point - who, apart from the media, trades in so exclusively information that people are actually willing to pay money for it?
With the exception of specialist researchers the answer is no one. Even consultants of various hues are more than willing to share general information free of charge over the Internet but it is a good, quick way of marketing and building credibility by giving a taste of their expertise.
Every business has expertise it can share to its target market and the general public that generally enriches our knowledge-base.
And because very few people will try DIY brain surgery because of something they've read on Wikipedia, they're more likely to go for the expert practitioner for the execution of the complex task.
They'll determine which expert to use by how helpful and transparent they appear - that's why the majority of information will be available free of charge.
A commenter in the ZNet story mentions:
Blogging is only interesting if it starts with an actual piece of news that some Princeton trained journalist spent two weeks researching and writing about.
Maybe so, but how much more interesting and credible will the blog be if the information was linked directly to the source instead of through the often unreliable filter of the media?
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