On Fri, 30 Dec 2005, Michael(tm) Smith wrote:
> But the problem with charging for the main daily content is
> finding users willing to pay for it. Because as long as competing
> sources are not charging users for it, they can always go to one
> of those competing sources to get their news.
This leads to a key point about the entire Internet, one that has been a
driver for it since long before commercial concerns came to dominate it,
or even appeared on it in any great number:
People will tend to chose "cheap and cheerful" over something that's
better quality, but more expensive.
If I recall correctly, we were originally talking about fairly high
quality English-language sources of Japanese news to be read on a
keitai. That's going to be a hard thing to find because it costs more
money to get that better quality, and on the Internet, it's very hard
to make that back. When it comes down opening one's wallet and voting
with dollars, most people will chose the lower-quality option if it's
cheaper.
That's the reason for the existence of the Internet as it is today. The
TCP/IP protocol suite won out over OSI ("The protocol of the 90s," as
Marshall Rose so well put it--I bet he didn't think would still be so
in the next century): TCP provides a lot less, and is a lot cheaper to
implement. FidoNet, Compuserv, AOL, all have succumbed to the cheaper
and, in terms of content, often inferior, TCP/IP Internet. The telcos
have been fighting hard for a decade or so now, but they're not exactly
doing well, either--and the only way they've survived at all has been
through using regulation and similar means to keep the market tilted in
their favour.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974
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Received on Tue Jan 10 00:33:34 2006