Information Wants To Be Free

According to Wikipedia, "information wants to be free" is an expression that has come to be the unofficial motto of the free content movement. The expression is first recorded as pronounced by Stewart Brand at the first Hackers' Conference in 1984, in the following context: 'On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.'"

When Shawn Fanning was a teenager at Northwestern, he was obviously on the side of the free-content movement when he invented the peer-to-peer file sharing program Napster, which allowed people, mostly computer-savvy young people, to either share or pirate music - depending on your point of view. If you were a free-content person, you shared files. If you were a content-valuable person, such as the rock band Metallica or the rapper Dr. Dre - both of whom sued Napster for enabling people to get their copyrighted songs without paying for them - you felt the songs were pirated.

Are you a content-free or content valuable person? Chances are you're conflicted. You might like the free content on NYTimes.com and HuffingtonPost.com, but you might pay for the content on WSJ.com. On the one hand, you might look the other way when your kids pirate songs; but on the other hand, you might pay for songs on iTunes because you're against pirating on moral grounds.

However, the quality of either free or paid-for content for the vast majority of people is not determined by the price of its acquisition by a publisher. The fact that a publisher pays an author a $5 million advance doesn't make a book better, a $180 million film is not automatically better than one that cost $5 million to make, and the quality or value of a blog post or a newspaper column is not determined by how much the publisher paid the writer.

In fact, I would argue that not only does information want to be free but also that content is often better when it is free - free not only to readers but also free to publishers.

The free distribution of and access to content enabled by the Internet has created a new medium, a new journalism, for readers that is much more of a two-way conversation than the old one-way model of print and broadcast. On websites that allow comments, the comments are often more relevant and better informed than the original blog or column, but, more important, comments allow readers to express their opinions and become part of a public dialogue. We all learn from each other, or as Satchel Paige said, "All of us are smarter than any one of us."

Content that is free to publishers, such as the blogs on the Huffington Post, allow writers to express themselves freely without an eye cocked to a gate-keeping owner, editor, or advertiser. It's pure, heartfelt opinion, and, more important, if it isn't reasonably well written and well argued, it won't get posted, which is a strong quality-control mechanism.

Content providers that have regularly scheduled, salaried columnists and pundits typically publish their content regardless of its quality. Bill O'Reilly has a regularly scheduled show and FOX News runs his program no matter what he rants about. The New York Times has hired William Kristol to write a column on Mondays, so it runs his column regardless of whether it's well written, makes sense, or has typos or factual errors in it (see Kristol's horribly written, typo-polluted column this past Monday). It reminds me of many tenured professors at universities who teach boring, irrelevant courses that are scheduled only because the schools have to have something for these dinosaurs to do.

The Huffington Post's free model is working - its growth has been extraordinary and it now has, according to some reliable Internet audience measurement firms, as many readers as the AP website and is approaching the audience of the Washington Post's website. Readers get access to thoughtful, well-written blogs by Senator Ted Kennedy, former senator Gary Hart, Nora Ehpron, Alex Baldwin, Tom Hayden, Charlie Rose, Marty Kaplan, and Terence Smith, to name only a few blog writers who are not writing for money. They are writing to get their opinions, their causes, their passions distributed, and the beneficiaries are the readers who can join in the conversation, and, thus, both reader and writer can be informed.

I made the above argument to a friend of mine who said that, "Well, when the Huffington Post starts making money, the bloggers will want to get paid, they won't write free." I disagree. Smart, committed people want their voices heard and smart, committed readers want to know what these people have to say. Free information is good, and free both ways is better.

Comments

[jwg37741]

"Content Be Not Free"

Charles Warner writes that information wants to be free. Information obviously lacks any opinion on the matter but, hey, Steward Brand and the MIT Media Labsters were hip and if they said so let"s not be picky. Mr. Warner, an early mentor in my career, is an economic liberal who would like to see most goods and services as priced as low as possible, or better, free. But free content is his favorite of all goods.

After Rupert Murdoch commented before completing his acquisition of Dow Jones that he may discontinue charging nine hundred thousand readers to "The Wall Street Journal" website $80, Mr. Warner was brimming with enthusiasm. He assured me over a long dinner conversation that this was the beginning of a world movement that would eventually eliminate subscription fees for virtually all online content. After that, the trend would be irreversible. All books Geologized; liability-safe Napsters" for music and movies and who knows what follows this profusion of information wanting, no screaming, to be free? Rupert"s muse was the shot heard around the world for free content. Let the games begin, I could imagine Mr. Warner cheering.

I suggested strongly that Mr. Murdoch had not thought this strategy through and that cancelling this subscription revenue stream made no business sense. The reason is that everyone who wants and needs the Journal"s content is already paying for it and receiving it either in the physical newspaper or via its digital online format. And nine hundred thousand people are shelling out about $80 annually for the privilege. Why would any business person-----let alone a shrewd one like Mr. Murdoch---return $80-100 million to happy customers? Mr. Warner"s answer was that more ad revenues would be generated because of a significant increase in visitors to the Journal"s online site. Disagree. While a few non-subscribing college kids or retired old fogies might occasionally visit wsj.com if there were no subscription fee their addition to the audience would be marginal quantitatively only would dilute the quality of its audience. Significantly lower income/occupation readership demographics would produce scant incremental advertising revenue. Certainly not remotely enough new income to offset the lost subscription revenue----a source of income that could easily, in my opinion, double by price increases over the next couple of years. This content will not ever be free.

Most all content is becoming more expensive, not less, and there is virtually no free content today.

Thirty years ago if you lived in one of the twelve million households subscribing to cable television your monthly bill was $10. Prior to that technological miracle of delivering video through Community Antenna Television wires, television after you purchased the set and antenna, was "free". No monthly bill. Free. (Of course, "free" media was never free because the cost that companies paid for advertising on television and all other media was "passed along" to the consumers when they purchased the advertised products. So the consumer paid"and still does---for media content when purchasing advertised products and services at the counter, in the showroom, or online. But I will resist using this fact as part of my demonstration below that information is not now nor will it become free to its consumers.)

Today the average cost of basic cable exceeds $42 monthly and if you have a few sets in your home and want additional "ad-supported" tiered channels plus some HBO you might pay $100 a month. You could argue that a ten-fold increase in the price of television content is OK because you are getting so much more programming content. Maybe OK but miles from being free. Note that the price to consumers of products that distribute information or content, such as computers and telephone calls have actually decreased over the same period---despite significant qualitative improvements in the performance of each. Cable television"s tenfold increase in thirty years is related solely to the cost increase of the information and entertainment content it delivers to the consumer.

Television is not alone in significantly charging more and more money for its content. Surely you recall that back around 1980 "The New York Times" cost a quarter six days a week and $1.25 on Sundays. You may not remember though that an issue of "The National Enquirer" back then cost fifty cents and that today it sells for $2.99, even at Wal-Mart where a toaster costs no more today than it did back in the glory days of "The Enquirer". Content is more expensive than ever. It is not becoming free despite the yearnings of Mr. Warner and his legions of "content-free persons".

Aha, you say. He"s only talking about traditional media, old information formats with their archaic distribution systems. The kind of information that never "wanted to be free". The kind of professionally-created content produced by large media dinosaur companies. He is talking about those non-internet content businesses with their inimical economic models that deprive these "content-free persons" of limitless, priceless information. He is not thinking of the Internet and its boundless free content.

But I am thinking now of exactly the Internet. Let"s use The Huffington Post as an example of what Mr. Warner touts proudly is free content. This conglomeration of content supplied to Huffington for no cost by content creators such as Mr. Warner and is free only to those who have access to a public library with no-charge internet access, read it on a computer at work or visit friends and family to go online. (Note that I am not making the argument, as promised, that because the Huffington Post sells advertising which its readers pay for when they buy advertised products it is not free.) For everyone else who reads The Huffington Post at home-----like every other web site of information----it costs money. None of this online content is free. To read Mr. Warner"s blog on Huffington you need to buy a computer (at least $500) and subscribe to Internet access through your telephone, cable or satellite supplier. That"s around $30 per month or $400 a year. That is what it costs to get daily access to The Huffington Post. Sure you get lots of other goodies but if you want the information from this site it will cost you the price of a computer and a healthy monthly subscription fee. "Free" information it is not and has never been free.

Mr. Warner cites me without mention of my name as saying that as soon as The Huffington Post "starts making money, the bloggers will want to get paid, they won"t write free." What I said was that when The Huffington Post begins making a profit----and perhaps they do now with the ad revenue generated from their 8 million unique monthly visitors---that the better-read, more popular contributors of Huffington content will either want some compensation (why should Huffington"s shareholders get it all?) or those that do not need or want payment for their intellectual property like presumably Charley Rose, Alex Baldwin, Ted Kennedy and the other well-known writers who likely attract 70-80% of the readership of The Huffington Post will at least demand that the company contribute money to their favorite charity. Charitable giving in return for good thinking which is being monetized by The Huffington Post sounds fair to me. And, it"s not that famous people like Rose, Baldwin and Kennedy need Huffington to get their ideas read. I think their own blog would attract those who cherish their views.

At that point when these "names" begin insisting upon compensation for themselves or for their charities I will suspect that Mr. Warner who has deep knowledge about the media and is an excellent communicator of his insights will join the line and demand his fair share of the income his work creates for his "employer", The Huffington Post.

[chriswarner]

History has shown us that there are trade-offs. This is a BIG issue. I was raised in the '60 and free love, then went through the AIDS scare of the '80s. Paperless is green, so books, DVD's, etc. that you can have and hold come at a high environmental price. If you need to make a living, you can't afford to give away content, yet MIT offers college courses for free.
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

[goodsports]

THOUGHT-PROVOKING READ. I WONDER, WILL INFO LIBERATION REQUIRE AN ECONOMIC REVOLUTION? SHOULD INFORMATION AND ENTERTAINMENT PROVIDERS BE LOOKING FOR SECOND CAREERS?

[BlackJAC]

Some novelists already have day jobs. They write for supplementary income.

[Mediacurmudgeon]

Yes, there will be an economic revolution, the writers who write hits will get paid more and the hacks will get paid less and, thus, have to get second jobs. It's been said that those who can, do it; those who can't, teach; and those who can do neither, consult. So in the economic revolution expect a lot more consultants.

[Brucerads]

Stewart Brand wrote a book in 1987 about and titled: The Media Lab. Founded at MIT by Nicholas Negroponte, Brand examined the media research work of the lab. Comments by Negroponte in that book ring true, especially today in light of Mr. Warner's column today.

Negorponte pointed out that public libraries used to be victimized by high theft rates of their books. Hardcover books were expensive and thus attractive for theft, if a reader wanted a personal rather than a borrowed copy. The advent of the paperback book, a much lower price points, made books more accessible and conversely, resulted in decreased public library thefts. The advent of home VCR's and feature film tapes available through video rental stores repeated the public library dilemma because studio greed set purchase prices in the $50-80 range. Duplicating the tapes exploded until price points dropped below $20.

Fast forward to the age of digital file sharing with Napster, Kazza et. al along with the price of CD's in the range of movie DVD's and history repeated itself, yet one more time.

To the rescue this time for consumers, artists and the record companies came the crew in Cupertino with the iPod and iTunes with 99 cent downloads.

These lessons to the publishing and entertainment industry should have hit home by now but apparently they have not. Keeping prices low will fuel volume sales and make theft of intellectual property inefficient and troublesome.

The Huffington Post will sustain and grow by making the content available to as many as possible for free or for a small subscription fee. The danger rests with writers like Mr. Baldwin. Expect his agents and managers to tell him he should be paid (meaning them as well!), because he is helping to generate greater circulation for the Post and is entitled to a paycheck.

Post readers should be prepared in the future to live with many ads and contributors should be paid based upon readership. The Post can create a compensation pool that would be paid out to contributors based on the number of clicks and comments.

[BlackJAC]

The Napsterites don't do what they do simply to have the music, especially when you consider that you could've saved a ton of cash just buying the CD outright instead of all the costs associated with getting the computer and the Internet connection needed to download in the first place. The Napsterites do it because they believe they have a right to do it, a mistaken belief born out of jealousy of the talented because the Napsterites themselves are untalented. They justify it by saying that the artists are "too rich" and should buy less stuff when someone complains.

[ParaplegicNomad]

Information doesn't "want" anything. It's a catchy phrase, but it willfully ignores complications that are far more compelling than what information "wants."

There are two complications, both involving human beings: Ownership and Competition. Content creators want people to know that "this Content belongs to me." And they want to know that "if he is getting X for his Content, I should be getting Y for mine." And people (unlike information) can actively influence the outcome; their wants therefore take precedence over those of information. Until people relinquish these two natural conceits, what is "good" for information (and society as a whole) is tangential.

Do you really think that'll happen? Even now, on HuffPo or any other "free" blog, the goal is still material benefit. Whether bloggers do it to sell ad space or t-shirts, or whether they do it to build their reputations as credit towards future ventures doesn't matter. "Free information" is still just tangential. That doesn't automatically invalidate the benefits of free information, but it means "free information" is only a side-effect of the *current* incarnation of the business model. "Writing for free" is not a fundamental or necessary part of the process.

Which means that, as the delivery mechanisms and their corresponding markets evolve, "free" is at risk of being abandoned should it become economically efficient.

Even if you're saying that people actually "want" to submit their personal desires to the "will" of information (a bold claim, in my opinion, as you see above), you still have to claim that this a Paradigm Shift and not just a Generational Fad (see: the revolutionary 70's, the self-absorbed 80's, the sensitive 90's). You have to claim that this philanthropy won't evaporate when Web 2.0's novelty is replaced by the real temptation of money. Because the benefits last only as long as this selflessness, and then so much for the "information liberation."

Copyright (C) 2008 ParaplegicNomad

(yeah, that's a joke, people. come on, live a little)

[JuliaRB]

I think that the Huffington Post is doing a great service because it provides a forum for non-professional writers to express their ideas and for me a reader to have one too. Thanks.

[InofTouch]

I expect more advertisement dollars or a PBS model in our future.

[Mediacurmudgeon]

Expect more NPR and PBS models -- a hybrid of subscription and advertising supported.