Re: ::scr Paying for It

[Simon Batistoni <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 02/05/02 12:44 +0100, Simon Wistow wrote:
> 
> The really good sites often can't even afford to stay alive but let's
> say that they do. What we're left with is the sites whihc are neither
> good nor bad - those that are getting better and becoming more popular.
> Suddenly they're bandwidth has gone through the roof but they don't have
> enough people hooked to pay for them. So they fold before they reach
> that stable plateau and we're left with free dross or expensive pay-for
> stuff which is getting worse because there's no competition which isn't
> backed by VC or a parent company.

Ah, okay. This is a subtly different conversation to "what can sites
do in the future". This is "why sites are fucked now". And then,
there's "how do we get from here to there", which is the real kicker,
although the answer is probably Just Fucking Do It, as FT.com appear
to have realised.

Yes, popular, good sites with no charging structure are fucked right
now, because they're not charging. All you're doing is describing a
known problem which needs changing.

If they move to a flexible subscription model, where they operate more
like a magazine, or they make advertising work, then there's no reason
why they can't be popular and successful. This is dependent on people
being weened of expecting everything for free, but I think we're
seeing the first aggressive moves by bigger players towards this, and
it will benefit smaller players when general attitudes change.

Yes, the era of plenty for free is over, but that would have happened
whether the web got busier or not.

I mean, maybe there are other ways, besides charging for content, or
advertising, of making sustainable revenue from content. Look at The
newspaper industry, though. They've been well established for the best
part of 300 years, and they haven't come up with one yet.

> Put it this way - can you imagine the IMDB getting done nowadays?
> Doesn't that make you sad?

Yes, I can. Perhaps with a little more thought and caution, but I
don't believe it's impossible.

Let's throw governments into this rapidly congealing mix, just for
fun. There's two ways the IMDB could go.

1) you pay a subscription, just like you'd buy a large tome of a film
guide in your local bookshop.

2) A government / (better) a consortium of world governments decides
that services like IMDb are good for their populous. There's no
reason, given the number of people online in the US and Europe now,
that governments shouldn't be prepared to invest in information like
this, in the same way that they invest in their public library
infrastructures. Uh... I'm going to handily ignore the state of UK
public libraries for a second, here.

This isn't miles from your ISP tax idea, but I think that it would be
more interesting to fund certain large-scale services of general
public use, as chosen by a vote or a central committee [Yes, there's
flaws in this, I know].

news.bbc.co.uk is arguably a perfect model for this kind of service
provision. In fact, all of the beeb's services are.

> > So who gets paid? I mean, this reads more like the current system for
> > reimbursing authors of books based on where and when they've been
> > photocopied for use in schools, colleges etc. It's a very scattershot
> > affair, which sort of works.
> 
> And it works better than nothing at all.

This is true.

> I haven't thought about this fully but ... you register with some
> central authority. Web servers (or routers or something) securely (hand
> wave over the details) monitor traffic to your site. 
> 
> ISPs pay a percentage of thier takings to this central authority and
> also send off total traffic through their routers and how it breaks
> down, this gets tallied up and 
> 
> cash you get = total worldwide cash * 
> 		amount of traffic you got/total worldwide traffic
>
> [DISCLAIMER : I know that there are serious flaws and security holes in
> this but ...]

It might well cost more money to run properly than it would make from
the ISPs, for starters...

It's a nice idea, if it could be made to work. I'm just being devil's
advocate, because I'm evil like that.