"Information Wants to be Free"...

Apparently at the first Hackers' Convention, way back in l984, Stewart Brand declared that "Information wants to be free." It's a great phrase, unless you are a writer, a musician, an artist, or another "content provider," in which case the phrase is a ticket to poverty.

The correct translation is, I believe, "people are freaking cheap."

I am not going to recap this media conflict, which now has taken on generatlonal tones, nor am I going to delve into apocalyptic scenarios, like bankruptcy at The New York Times.

But I am going to link to an interesting think piece that heads up this week's Time, How to Save Your Newspaper, that is the talk of the journo world. Walter Issacson argues that this may be the year that we shift from an "unsustainable" -- that is, bound to crash and burn -- model towards a "micropayment" model for information. Well, we can hope. But this comment of his rings so true...

Another group that benefits from free journalism is Internet service providers. They get to charge customers $20 to $30 a month for access to the Web's trove of free content and services. As a result, it is not in their interest to facilitate easy ways for media creators to charge for their content. Thus we have a world in which phone companies have accustomed kids to paying up to 20 cents when they send a text message but it seems technologically and psychologically impossible to get people to pay 10 cents for a magazine, newspaper or newscast.

How true, how true...thus Verizon is making billions from kids texting "R U BORED" to each other in class under the nose of their teachers, and media companies have more readers than ever, but revenues are falling off a cliff.

Progress: What a crock.

Arrrrgggggghhhh.