Would it work?
Can online news organizations put the genie back into the bottle? Paul Gillin at NewsPaperDeathWatch think that if news organizations can think like record execs did before ITunes when it took on Napster, then there just might be a shot at it.
A decade ago, Napster briefly tried to make music free. When the Recording Industry Association of America applied legal pressure to shut down Napster, the wisdom was that music-sharing would simply be driven underground in a maze of peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent and BearShare. That happened, but only to a degree. Apple’s pay-by-the-drink model has flourished and even BearShare has shed its spyware-ridden past in favor of working with music publishers. Free file-sharing will always exist, but the music industry has successfully convinced fans that swapping copyrighted material is wrong. The recording industry thought it killed Napster, but what really put the stake through its heart were bands like Metallica, who went directly to their fans with a passionate argument that pirating music was killing the golden goose.
Read the whole thing as it is thinking outside the box. Would you be willing to pay for your news if you couldn’t find what you were looking. It’s free now but would you buy it if you had to.
Interesting conversation. Leave your comments below.
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