Some publishers are making big news these days by deciding to switch from an ad-supported model to a paywall — where visitors have to pay a fee for access to content. I don’t think it’s a good idea. To oversimplify things, there are two kinds of content. “Commoditized” content — i.e., stuff everybody else has, …
Continue reading ‘How newspapers might survive the new world’ »
I can understand when a pre-teen thinks that the price of some product should be calculated by an equation that includes the cost of making it plus a small profit. I can’t understand when a grown man falls for the same blunder. The price of something is set by the willingness of the consumer to …
Publishers can’t get enough revenue from ads to support their efforts, so some of them are turning to paywalls as a solution. The logic is “we are losing money so you have to pay us,” as if the publisher’s business model is the consumer’s problem. I think it’s misguided, and so does Ashley Friedlein in …
Continue reading ‘Monetizing online content does not mean paywalls’ »
Had an interesting chat with some folks from PointAbout yesterday about iPhone development and the future of mobile. They say that if you want to go mobile, you should focus on the iPod/iPhone for now. Blackberry is too fragmented, with each different type of device using a different operating system or browser. And since the …
Nobody polices the internet, which means that it’s a cesspool, full of porn, scams and flagrant copyright violations. I can’t let my kids have unfiltered access, and even “filtered” access is very questionable. For some odd reason the Internet lives in a world apart. It’s okay to have laws that regulate the sale and positioning …
I’ve been in professional publishing since God was a lad, so I have a particular perspective on copyright and the rules for accessing content on the web. As you might suspect, the “if I can get your copyrighted material off the web for free that’s okay” attitude that many people have really bugs me. I …
Continue reading ‘A solution to online copyright infringement’ »