I laugh with you, Jon.

The moment content is digital, it becomes free whether you like it or not. There’s really no way to stop it from spreading (specially if you created great content) once it’s out there.

As a content creator your main interest should be to get that content to as many people as you can. Why not ride on the benefit of more people wanting free content and thinking of alternative business models? Why not use this content distribution shockwave to communicate important messages (or sell products?) ?

I can’t think of a more costly and harder to reproduce service than Google’s search, yet it’s a free service (and It could definitively be a paid one since it’s quality is so good compared to others) yet it’s free and they’re certainly not complaining about lack of money, they’re one of the most revenue intensive, influential and consequential online properties in the world.

In an information society, only top secret content should be paid for. If you’re writing news for the WSJ, isn’t it the point to have your news spread?

Adapt or die, there’s no “mistaken perception”, in reality, no matter how hard you delude yourself from it, content is free once you make it into ones and zeroes and put it on the network, there’s no way around it, stop fighting it, embrace it and learn to thrive on the new model.

Google ‘news’ items are ad hooks and sometimes stay up for days on end — long after their relevance has faded — while other genuine news doesn’t see the light of Google’s day.

Cheers!

What they aren’t getting the point on, is that most of the news conglomerate went through corporate downsizing where they dumped workers, pocketed the payments that would have went for salaries and benefits, they reorganized time and again, and every time, they paid the CEO and upper management insane bonus while leaving those that made the product and did the work out of the loop.

Now there is no one left to actually do the work, they don’t have the time. Instead they are holding down the work of 3 to 4 people and that doesn’t leave time for investigative reporting or anything beyond syndicated news feeds. 80% or better of material you are reading on news sites, they didn’t do themselves. They got it and reprinted it at best or took the material and rewrote it at worst. If you wait on tradition media to give you the news, like a newspaper, by the time you have gotten the news it is hours or even near a day old and you paid for this? You get it on the net, it’s fairly fresh, often within hours of the event if not sooner.

Then add the bias that most of the newsworks do, slanting their news to fit their ideas of what they want you to think. Plus add the fact that little or no fact checking is now being done as it used to. It allows things such as info leaks by the government into how they want their citizens informed, not necessarily what is the truth. Most citizens are so aware of this slant and bias, they no longer are very interested in hearing it from their own news networks but know that they have a better chance of getting the real news off the net at some other country than the one they live in. None of this speaks very highly for the present news organizations as they have chucked what they did well for the quick buck. Getting in the quick buck is over with and now sustained work is what will bring in the bacon. You can’t do that with understaffed and under supplied. They are now getting the payback for taking the quick buck because they can’t do the job with the few they have.

Now that they are cut to the bone on real news work, there is no need of complaining that no one wants to hear what they have to repeat. Most of these charges to me appear to be bogus and merely a way to try and suck so funding from someone else for their lack.

Google is a searchengine last time I checked =P

I associate all p2pnet stories with Jon or Surfer heh