I believe in information as a public good. This adds a refinement to Stewart Brand's famous dictum: information access wants to be free.
But those who create information, particularly if that's their full-time job, must, as Adam Smith says of all other workers, live by their wages.
The first part of information as public good says that the distribution of information, particularly over systems such as the Internet which were built for the purpose of disseminating knowledge, should be freely accessible. And blocking those who block ads is broken behavior.
Advertising itself, and the mass of techical misfeatures piled on top of it: bloated webpages (see Maciej Ceglowsky for amusing, but pointedly accurate criticisms), tons of crap, malware, and above all, integrated and integral surveillance, is simply broken. Perhaps there's a way to bring ads to the Web without these misfeatures, perhaps, as Jerry Mander and Neil Postman have said, advertising itself is evil and must die.
But that still leaves the question of paying creators: authors, musicians, photographers, artists, filmmakers, actors, sculptors, and others.
Several people have suggested forms of universal content payment and syndication. Phil Hunt of Pirate Party UK as a broadband tax, Richard M. Stallman of the Free Software Foundation an "Internet License", and I my own "universal content syndication". I'm not convinced that this is the way to fly, or that they can work. I suspect they're far better than micropayments (see Nick Szabo and Clay Shirky's rebuttals to these, or Jakob Nielsen if you prefer support).
But we need something. What we've got clearly ain't working.
And it's got to be pretty good-sized. Internationally, advertising is a multi-hundred-billion-dollar industry (~$500 b if memory serves). Parted out among the 1 billion or so members of the developed world (the 6 billion of the up-and-coming deserve this subsidy, IMO), that's about $500 per head, annually. Assuming some advertising remains, that's the upper bounds on a broadband tax.
But yes: $500/year per capita (and I'm a big fan of progressive allocation by income or wealth), should offer you an all-you-can-eat access to any and all media. Again, more for the wealthy, less if you're a starving student.
Just a thought.
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Use alternate links -- but also, address issue of supporting content
But those who create information, particularly if that's their full-time job, must, as Adam Smith says of all other workers, live by their wages.
The first part of information as public good says that the distribution of information, particularly over systems such as the Internet which were built for the purpose of disseminating knowledge, should be freely accessible. And blocking those who block ads is broken behavior.
Advertising itself, and the mass of techical misfeatures piled on top of it: bloated webpages (see Maciej Ceglowsky for amusing, but pointedly accurate criticisms), tons of crap, malware, and above all, integrated and integral surveillance, is simply broken. Perhaps there's a way to bring ads to the Web without these misfeatures, perhaps, as Jerry Mander and Neil Postman have said, advertising itself is evil and must die.
But that still leaves the question of paying creators: authors, musicians, photographers, artists, filmmakers, actors, sculptors, and others.
Several people have suggested forms of universal content payment and syndication. Phil Hunt of Pirate Party UK as a broadband tax, Richard M. Stallman of the Free Software Foundation an "Internet License", and I my own "universal content syndication". I'm not convinced that this is the way to fly, or that they can work. I suspect they're far better than micropayments (see Nick Szabo and Clay Shirky's rebuttals to these, or Jakob Nielsen if you prefer support).
But we need something. What we've got clearly ain't working.
And it's got to be pretty good-sized. Internationally, advertising is a multi-hundred-billion-dollar industry (~$500 b if memory serves). Parted out among the 1 billion or so members of the developed world (the 6 billion of the up-and-coming deserve this subsidy, IMO), that's about $500 per head, annually. Assuming some advertising remains, that's the upper bounds on a broadband tax.
But yes: $500/year per capita (and I'm a big fan of progressive allocation by income or wealth), should offer you an all-you-can-eat access to any and all media. Again, more for the wealthy, less if you're a starving student.
Just a thought.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Edward Morbius.
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