On the need to pay for content

There has been a lot of talk lately about coming up withe new models of providing information, such that the consumers will "continue" to pay for content. Not so fast, says Paul Graham:

Publishers of all types, from news to music, are unhappy that consumers won't pay for content anymore. At least, that's how they see it. In fact consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren't really selling it either. If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn't better content cost more? . . . Economically, the print media are in the business of marking up paper.

But don't people pay for information? Only certain kinds of information:

People will pay for information they think they can make money from. That's why they paid for those stock tip newsletters, and why companies pay now for Bloomberg terminals and Economist Intelligence Unit reports. But will people pay for information otherwise? History offers little encouragement.

[via Daily Dish]

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Craigslist: a most unusual near-monopoly

Wired's Gary Wolf gives a detailed look at Craiglist. This is truly a remarkable story of a business that is not in it to gouge consumers. Quite the opposite. Consider the eccentricities of the founder, Craig Newmark:

Newmark's claim of almost total disinterest in wealth dovetails with the way craigslist does business. Besides offering nearly all of its features for free, it scorns advertising, refuses investment, ignores design, and does not innovate. Ordinarily, a company that showed such complete disdain for the normal rules of business would be vulnerable to competition, but craigslist has no serious rivals. The glory of the site is its size and its price. But seen from another angle, craigslist is one of the strangest monopolies in history, where customers are locked in by fees set at zero and where the ambiance of neglect is not a way to extract more profit but the expression of a worldview. The axioms of this worldview are easy to state. "People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day," Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.

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George Bush has fixed our ailing economy!

Thanks, President Bush, for taking care of the problem!  Now all let's get back to our wasteful, ignorant, self-indulgent American lives!  Let's add another new big screen TV to the credit card! What else is a reader of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch supposed to think when scanning this headline: "Stock…

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Mainstream Media Hatchet Jobs aimed at Obama

I'm creating a place to collect the incidents where the mainstream media unfairly dumps on Obama. I'll start with this outrageous Washington Post article (and headline) slamming Obama's proposed budget even while McCain's proposed budge is much worse pursuant to non-partisan sources.

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Spend a minute pecking on your keyboard. Nail a plagiarist

Slate's Nancy Nall Derringer tells you how easy it can be to nail a plagiarist: I spent much of last Friday being congratulated for "brilliant reporting" that consisted of a minute's worth of typing on my laptop. That's how long it took for me to notice what seemed to be…

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