RE: FN-FORUM This is quite interesting...

date posted 20th July 2001 23:48

It seems to me though that the problem with the concept of content that is
fee based would be that one would always get free alternatives which
although they may or may not be so good and might only on rare occasions be
better, they would be the sites that attract the most visitors. Competition
is what makes the free market tick.

The only way to prevent that scenario would be to make it illegal to provide
web content free of charge or ensure that large American corporations own
the copyright of everything even colours, our dna and especially the entire
English language and any combination of words constructed there from. People
would then have to pay a fee or tax probably payable to Bill Gates for a
special licence in order to breath, speak, eat, have sex, sing, dance,
paint, play music or design Web pages other than in the privacy of their own
homes. Of course others would have to pay for the privilege of receiving any
communications or expressions from other people to ensure that nothing can
ever be free ever again, perhaps it could be called the Window tax (imagine
how expensive and unpopular Spam would be, not to mention TEST messages
:-) ). but of course eventually a vegetable would rise up and rule the
world. (possibly a future Russian leader a potato with the effigy of Stalin
held up on a piece of string or maybe Bill Gates could program his soul into
a new operating system and live forever)

Anyway I think these sort of ideas are sort of typical of the sort of
conflicts within capitalist society, which often seem especially evident in
discussions on the nature and or future of the Internet and in
disseminations from the "Land of the Free". Perhaps it's a bit like in Nazi
Germany where people were attracted to certain ideas such as the
redistribution of wealth from certain groups in society and nationalistic
pride and blind or ambivalent to the implications and the likely final
outcome until it was way too late to stop.

Nick


http://www.artberry.net





> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL REMOVED]
> [EMAIL REMOVED] Behalf Of Ian Fenn
> Sent: 20 July 2001 18:39
> To: [EMAIL REMOVED]
> Subject: FN-FORUM This is quite interesting...
>
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> Ian Fenn
> Liang ba shiah dz / Ai chu fong to, Chopstix Media Limited
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