by Ethan Johnson
February 2, 2007
At what point does the expectation to be paid, let alone make a living plying one's craft become a sin? Don't worry, this isn't a roundabout way of saying "pay me, or get off of my site." However, I have been seeing and hearing rumblings here and there about the so-called sin of wanting to get, you know, paid. For example:
Political blogger Glenn Greenwald is moving his tent to the friendly confines of Salon.com. I have no passionate feelings about this, other than to say "good work if you can get it." Others seem to disagree, citing Salon's advertising scheme as somehow being "evil":
The alternative is Salon's non-existence. As Juan Cole said, Salon publishes articles -- and pays the writers who write them -- which would not be published in very many other places, certainly not ones with the readership of the size Salon reaches. So enduring an ad (or subscribing to avoid the ad) seems a small and necessary price to pay to enable the existence of punditry and reporting outside of the approved orthodoxies of Time and The Washington Post. Salon doesn't have an ad wall because they are evil, amoral corporatists trying to bombard people's brains with tools of capitalist manipulation. They have an ad wall because that's the only way they can continue to offer the content they offer for free to people without ceasing to exist.
Michelle Leder at footnoted.org comes through with another timely reference, regarding her "paid content" approach to funding:
I understand that some readers find this controversial, or even distasteful (as one reader wrote). But there needs to be a way for the site to sustain itself and the money received from donations and limited advertising has not been enough to pay for routine site upgrades, like the one we’ll be doing this weekend, let alone my time. If you value the information footnoted.org provides, I hope you will consider making a donation to the site.
Not to mention that the local public radio station is having a pledge drive. I used to get really irritated with those pledge drives, but the alternative (as radio goes) is to listen to commercial radio, and there's a reason why it is so named. Don't even get me started on sports talk radio, or should I say, 15 minutes of commercials, 5 minutes of talk, and yet another commercial break. Rinse, repeat. Yes, it's annoying, but the fact is, radio ain't cheap. Radio receivers are, however, which seems to be part of the disconnect between broadcasters and listeners.
An excellent method for developing empathy regarding paid content is to try to produce your own for free. The equipment to do it well isn't cheap. Neither is the bandwidth to provide it. For all of the flak that television gets, do the math: Try streaming video over the internet at the same rate as TV. You can't, or more to the point, you can't do it easily (or cheaply). I forget what the virtual transmission rate is for TV, but it's something like xGB/sec. (Where x is whatever amount of Gigabytes the rate is.) Question: Who is getting, say, 2GB/sec throughput over their internet connection? Follow-up: Was the connection meant for a single subscriber? Plug in any given TV set (doesn't matter when it was built) and you'll pull television channels at a constant rate.
Of course, through the magic of advancements like video compression and fiber optic cable, IPTV is closer to a sustainable reality. But that does not lessen my contention that such an infrastructure, etc is cheap to provide and maintain. Somebody is paying for all of this, and it's fair to assume that they're going to want a return on that investment.
On a side note, I have never been a fan of bloggers who all but demand donations and cite the amount of time they spend blogging as the primary cost driver. I am realistic about this site: Mar and I set it up to be our personal hangout, and after 5 minutes of consideration about hosting ads on this site, we decided against it, as it's "for us, by us." Nobody is forcing us to post content here. Same with most bloggers: Nobody forced them to write 50 blog posts every day, so if blogging is affecting one's quality of life, then like the doctor says, "don't do that." I am more sympathetic and supportive of funding schemes like Salon or Footnoted employs, where value is derived from the content, and if you indeed value it, pay for it. Passively, even.
I am unsure why the advent of the popular internet somehow came to mean that nobody a) needs to pay for anything anymore, and b) nobody should want to get paid for anything. Linux is "free", but only because various developers agreed that "cred" was more important than "cash." Contrast this to "evil" Microsoft, or darling Apple, who in their own way charge for services rendered. Wi-fi "sharing" is another outgrowth of this mentality. I'm all for sharing, but it's pretty lousy being the one to foot the internet bill for everyone else in close proximity. Like the story of the Little Red Hen, "sharing" is a one-way street: You cook, we eat.
Conversely, there is the phenomenon that Seth Finkelstein calls "citizen lunchmeat": You produce, they profit. YouTube is held up as an example of this, where your videos are hosted freely, but advertising revenue is generated by the site, and in turn pocketed outright by the hosting service. Unfair? Perhaps, but I'd imagine that YouTube's internet bill isn't cheap. I get where Seth is coming from, though, and he has cited many examples of "you produce, we profit" schemes that are more galling than benign. The "I-Report" scheme launched recently by CNN comes to mind. We'll show your storm videos, and pocket all of the advertising revenue, thanks.
Finally, there is a school of thought regarding online content production (such as blogging) that says "after this, because of this." There is no money to be made for the mere act of blogging, per this philosophy, but the mere act of blogging can drive revenue through other channels. For example, landing a paid speaking gig, attracting clients to your for-fee consulting practice, or selling items that people read about on your blog. "Lemme tell you all about life on this here apple orchard" translates into pre-qualified buyers of your apples, cider, and t-shirts. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Heaven forfend, however, that one should seek to be paid for the mere act of blogging. I have no interest in re-hashing the hue and cry that went up, and continues to simmer, over Pay Per Post. For those keeping score at home, Google ads, Amazon affiliate agreements, wish lists, pimping/whoring = all OK. Being paid outright for blogging = apocalypse. This differs from my previous comments regarding demands for donations in that a third party steps in to pay the bloggers for their services rendered. Despite disclaimers and other measures aimed at transparency, such an arrangement is "evil" and that's that. Note that the loudest critics seem to be involved in more oblique funding schemes. Or, as mentioned above, Citizen Lunchmeat.
In sifting through the various arguments and schools of thought regarding freedom and profits, I'm noticing that there seems to be an implicit demand for outright Communism, but minus the actual infrastructure and necessary social order that such a transition would require. After all, as the distaste for paying for services rendered becomes more widespread, who will bother to build and staff hospitals? How might we profit by maintaining a fire department? What need have we for the police? Who wants to serve as a garbage collector? How menial!
I will have more to say about all of this in a future article. That's more than enough to wade through and contemplate for now. <EM>
