Against Web Subscriptions and Micropayment
I was recently invited to contribute to a subscription-based Web magazine. Here’s part of the response I sent:
[Your magazine] sounds very interesting. Unfortunately, I’m one of those dinosaurs who’s still bothered by the idea of subscription stuff on the Web. I still imagine a hypertext network in which link authoring and link following are integral to reading and writing. If the network becomes largely subscription based (or micropayment based) then we’ll be restricting writing and reading to those who can pay - giving up on the dream I grew up on in public schools and libraries (of people being able to read and write at all income levels, or even as children with no money to spend). I know it’s a dream we haven’t always delivered on as a society, but it’s still an important one to me.
In any case, I very much wish you well personally with [your magazine], even if it’s the sort of thing I don’t feel I can support in general. It sounds like something I’d otherwise be excited to participate in. And I understand that the other income models we’ve come up with for the Web are no better (and arguably worse). I consider it one of the biggest puzzles we face as a field.
Here’s the response I received this morning:
> we’ll be restricting writing and reading to those who can pay -
> giving up on the dream I grew up on in public schools and libraries
Publishers have always gotten paid. Your call amounts to relegating writing, and the Web, into a hobby for the leisure classes and the state-supported academic nobility.
As it is new years day, I won’t write any more; beginning the new year with fury would be a bad precedent.
I wrote:
> Publishers have always gotten paid.
Right. And in the world of libraries and bookstores the need for multiple copies meant that the different copies could be available in different ways - some for pay by the individual, some purchased by the society to make available without individual pay. The puzzle now is how do we find a way to (1) support writers and publishers as well as (2) preserve the dream of the public school and library. It’s a puzzle because we don’t need multiple copies on the network.
> Your call amounts to relegating writing, and the Web,
> into a hobby for the leisure classes and the state-
> supported academic nobility.
My call is to continue to search for other models - because micropayment and subscription foreclose the idea of a library. My desire to write came up while spending most of my elementary school afternoons at the library. The more I read, the more I could read - I wasn’t using up my reading budget. I don’t want to contribute to creating a web that would foreclose this possibility for future kids.
> As it is new years day, I won’t write any more; beginning
> the new year with fury would be a bad precedent.
I’m sorry to hear that my position evokes fury in you. Yours does not evoke it in me. I really do think this is a puzzle, and that well meaning people can take different positions.