Who will pay for news?

OK, fine, so the blogger in the parents' basement is out. But just how many major websites are there, websites that get more visits than the local newspapers in your town? Hundreds? Thousands? If all of them decided to charge at once, your Internet bill is much higher, and your Internet experience is much lesser.

You put a website up on an open Internet. Then you complain that people are going to it. How is it the fault of the ISP? They're not carrying a website, they're providing access. You chose to create the website. Nobody forced you to do so. You put it up on an Internet that theoretically can be accessed by anyone in the world. If you don't want that, it's on you to provide the barrier so not everyone can access it equally.

How would I feel about being told a site was no longer accessable? How do cable and satellite customers feel when a carriage dispute threatens to leave them without a network or cluster of cable channels? They get pissed at all parties involved and have a sour taste in their mouth at the process.

 

Whoa, whoa, nobody's talking about "fault." We're talking about capitalism.. the market place... simple dollars and cents.

Listen, don't feel sorry for the ISPs. I used to work for an ISP. The internet sales guys were like Gucci Gulch revisited. It was a license to print money. Insane, truly insane.

99% of websites could not command a carriage fee from an ISP.

The New York Times, CNN, AP ? Yeah, I think they could start commanding a modest carriage fee. Which would mean the ISPs would have to cut into their 100% profit margins a tad.

It's the perfect plan... nobody gets hurt. ;D That's a joke. Actually, there are some major hurdles. But what if the NY Times could work its way up to .25 cents per internet subscriber. Now some serious journalism can get done, right?

 

But if providing Internet access was so easy, why don't you see more companies do so? Until high-speed mobile became common, usually you had a choice between the cable provider and one or two DSL providers (and satellite, which you only bothered with if you lived in the deepest of sticks). If it's a license to print money, why aren't we all running out to do it now?

I don't think the local paper is often going to be one of the 1 percent that could charge. NYT? Maybe. Wall Street Journal? Perhaps. Local Gazette? I have my doubts. People might be bothered they can't get to the site, but not enough to switch ISPs. Or they'll go to the site through a proxy or use some other form of backdoor.

Using the argument that ISPs should pay because they profit from disseminating others' work, then should sports franchises and colleges charge newspapers and TV stations for covering their games? Obviously they charge rights fees for broadcasting games, but if newspapers are profiting because of a team's success, isn't it the same principle? Yes, they're providing original work based on that success, but the selling point isn't that the newspaper is providing pictures and words, it's that they're providing pictures and words of someone else's glory.

 

Providing internet access is not easy. It requires HUGE capital investments. But after that's done, it's all gravy. I never said the ISPs shouldn't make a healthy profit. 100% profit margins? That's a bit much.

But I'll tell you one thing. I pay $70 a month for internet. I'll be damned if I'm going to pony up a cent more to access nytimes.com.

The credit card does not leave the wallet very easily.

Accessing NYTimes.com should be part of the 70 damn dollars I already pay!