Privacy vs. Crawling: Digging Deeper into "Newspapers vs. Google"

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Mary Eisenhart <marye () yoyow com>
Date: April 7, 2009 8:33:13 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Privacy vs. Crawling: Digging Deeper into  
"Newspapers vs.  Google"

Not that I expect it to make the list, but Lauren's post concerning  
the handwringing about "pay TV" destroying free TV struck a chord.

The whole point of "pay TV," back in the day, was to allow the payers  
to access the content without commercials--and incidentally to get  
material that wouldn't be commercially viable in the lowest-common- 
denominator world of commercial TV.

The whole point of "educational TV," i.e. PBS, was also so one could  
get such content without being pestered by commercials. That's what  
you were paying for when you send in your membership fees.

We've seen the utter destruction of both models. Masterpiece Theater  
( or whatever its silly new name is) is nearly as plagued with  
commercial messages as the Hallmark Hall of Fame, and the same is true  
of cable channels. At every opportunity the media companies have sold  
out to the advertising world (with much self-justification of course,  
ignoring the entire point that if the members didn't want to pay for  
it it shouldn't be happening, and instead resorting to any means  
necessary to fund what the media company wanted to do. The betrayal of  
trust involved in that is huge).

As long as content companies are dependent on whatever devious  
advertising revenue they can get, and as long as those who want the  
content are willing to let advertisers call the tune as long as they  
themselves don't have to pay for anything, the death spiral will  
continue.

And this, of course, is integrally tied to an economy based on  
constantly conning people into buying stuff they don't need.




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