The End of the Free Internet
Linked by David Adams on Sun 11th Jul 2010 18:54 UTC
Internet & Networking There's an article today at abc.com that looks at recent trends around net-based pay-for services and the smattering of paywalls from News Corp to the NYT that are up or threatening to be put up, and speculating that this could be the beginning of a trend. Of course, a YouTube video rental site and a few large publishers putting up paywalls will make zero difference to the "free internet" on their own. But if they're successful, it could spark emulation. But could this be a trend that could snowball enough to change the nature of the net?
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deathshadow
Member since:
2005-07-12

Well, that was one 'mother' of a post ;)

You're so shortsighted and bought into you the corporatist view of things you don't even know you have blinkers on.


Funny, given how absurdly slanted your response was... and unrealistic too. Lemme guess, early to mid twenties, two college loans with mommy and daddy still giving you money, either US west coast or somewhere in the Nordic states of Europe? Either that or a Kiwi. Sorry, the attitude (and ignorance) just kind of screams that.

Who pays for mothers to have children?


If the father didn't run like a gutless coward, he does. If not, poor woman works two jobs to pay for the mistake --- otherwise the state ends up footing the bill, so in a way we all do...

Unless you're in some third world undeveloped nation where people don't even go to the hospital for births... What's the infant mortality rate across the spine of Africa again? 1 in 8 stillborn, 1 in 5 before the age of five? A little civilization and money to pay for it is a good thing. Do we even want to talk Sierra Leone?

Who pays for all the unpaid labor that mothers put in each day?


Traditionally? The father who goes out to work and pays for everything... nowadays? The mother goes out to work and has to pay someone else to watch the kid since the father usually isn't man enough to bother -- so she's not even doing that labor anymore. (Be a man, raise your **** kids, keep it in your pants, or at least wear a **** raincoat!)

If it is not paid then why do parents raise costly children with no financial reward?


Who says raising a healthy child isn't a reward unto itself - but of course that's a loaded question since spin it around and who's paying them so they can raise the kid when they aren't working... It's called a job!

Why would people build a multitude of operating systems of industrial quality (there is more than one after all) and give it away for free?

In college mommy and daddy usually are paying for it, or they put themselves a decade into debt with college loans helped out by others who are still having life paid for by mommy and daddy or on credit. Then when they grow up they have to go get day jobs and it ends up stillborn, or they are lucky enough to find someone who will ACTUALLY pay them to keep working on it. Right Linus?

Your primitive, narrow, and quite frankly obsolescent view of economics is Industrial Age thinking and doesn't account for such things.

People working for the exchange of currency is recent and the exception to the rule in global labor


BWAHAAHAA... Ok, rule one, don't argue that with a history minor. Not only will they laugh in your face, they'll point fingers and say "hey, look at the ..."

The exchange of coin or goods for labor predates written history; from shiney beads to gold coin, monetary exchange has been the basis of every major civilization... and the history of labor without exchange is not a pretty one you want to be bringing up - much less being the exception, not the rule. There's a reason we have the aphorism "A man worth his salt"

Imagine what would happen to the world economy if mothers charged for their services? What would happen to the world if a cartel of wives charged for conjugal services? Most men would just dump the wife they had for someone who did the same for free - and there will always be someone who will.

Imagine the husband wasn't able to go out and find a job to pay for his not being able to keep it in his pants -- Imagine the mother couldn't go out and find a job to get a decent days wage for a decent days work or that the state wouldn't pick up the slack through programs like WICK... Imagine living in one of these pre-industrial third world hellholes where the kid is put to hard labor before they're old enough to walk, and end up member of a rape gang running around with a AK-47 by the age of 12.

A little civilization goes a long ways.

Generally people only charge for labor (in barter or currency) when they are 'working', which is doing things they don't like and wouldn't do otherwise.

Yes, working... like professional artists, professional sportsmen, professional musicians, professional software developers, and professional news reporters. To compare the people working those as their JOB to some home hobbyist rubbing one out in their basement is a travesty of the highest order -- especially when some of those people have college loans they are trying to pay off and a family to feed.

Creating a paywall to create artificial scarcity is actually a bad move since it is advertising that drives the revenue stream - just ask Google.

and yet the coffer is not bottomless -- see the continually skyrocketing cable fees and increase in commercial time the past twenty years, where in th 70's and 80's a half-hour show without commercials was 22 minutes, today it's 17... and don't tell me it costs the cable company $60/mo for basic 60 channels. Most of that is cycled back to the stations in rebroadcast fees becuase the commercials aren't cutting it for revenue.

... and forget not the original dotcom bust, which can partially be blamed on the 'advertising can pay for anything and everything' mentality; Just ask Juno, NetZero, and KMart's Bluelight how well that worked. For every success, there's a rather depressing body count they are standing upon.

You go on about free agencies - so why is someone even WANTING to charge for services an issue then? This is the part that burns me, you don't want to pay for it, DON'T. The Internet on the whole is a luxury, NOT a neccessity (unless it's your job) and frankly too many people are getting their panties in a twist over that luxury due to this increasing sense of entitlement. Magically we're supposed to just have a means of life materielize from thin air or something.

Life doesn't work that way.

Edited 2010-07-12 13:08 UTC

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