Vox Media’s technology-focused site announced Tuesday that it was rolling out its first sitewide subscription service, putting some content behind a paywall.
Its a tragedy but not an unavoidable one. It’s a direct result of choosing to fund information via the same scarcity based model that we use for physical goods (capitalism).
We don’t need to, unlike physical goods, in the digital age it is virtually free to copy and distribute information, but because we still fund it via a model that only gives it value when it’s scarce, paywalls or advertising end up being the only way to pay for it.
We should instead have the equivalent of government run subscription services that allow us to provide all information to everyone while still rewarding creators, without using advertising as a middleman / drain on society.
I hadn’t thought about it that way, thanks for sharing that perspective. I agree, but isn’t that what NPR was supposed to be? Or am I confusing it with PBS?
Not really, both are more like traditional cable channels, that are limited to specific programming and amounts of time.
I’m imagining more like modern streaming services where a any item from a massive catalog can be streamed / delivered to anyone. So any work could.be put into it and it would be fre to use, but the author would get a cut each time it was used.
Its a tragedy but not an unavoidable one. It’s a direct result of choosing to fund information via the same scarcity based model that we use for physical goods (capitalism).
We don’t need to, unlike physical goods, in the digital age it is virtually free to copy and distribute information, but because we still fund it via a model that only gives it value when it’s scarce, paywalls or advertising end up being the only way to pay for it.
We should instead have the equivalent of government run subscription services that allow us to provide all information to everyone while still rewarding creators, without using advertising as a middleman / drain on society.
Sounds a bit like the UK TV License.
I hadn’t thought about it that way, thanks for sharing that perspective. I agree, but isn’t that what NPR was supposed to be? Or am I confusing it with PBS?
Not really, both are more like traditional cable channels, that are limited to specific programming and amounts of time.
I’m imagining more like modern streaming services where a any item from a massive catalog can be streamed / delivered to anyone. So any work could.be put into it and it would be fre to use, but the author would get a cut each time it was used.