The web's original sin

Information faces two distinct quandries, at odds with one another. Stewart Brand​'s dictum is almost correct. Information access wants to be free, and any failure to meet this introduces tremendous social deadweight losses. At the same time, information providers, and most especialy those who create the initial works, must have sustinance.

Crucially, though, that is not the same as saying they must be paid by piecework.

Piecework payment is instead an awfully good way to create perverse incentives. Such as, say, disinformation, low-quality information, blogspam, listicles, demagoguery, fear-inducing press, angst-inspiring advertising (are you worried about your halatosis, ring around the collar, dandruff, greasies, fashion sense, car, dogfood, body oder, spotty glassware, non-squeezable toilet tissue, size and/or flattness of your television, long-distance and/or mobile calling packages, child's education, and/or erectile dysfunction?).

There are a few major trends in online publishing:

1. Free.

2. Advertising / Surveillance supported.

3. Paywall. Usually a subscription.

4. Micropayments -- a small but discrete fee per item viewed.

What's generally _not_ on the table is a large, carte blanche all-you-can-eat plan. Effectively a superbundled subscription. Call it a universal content syndication tax and remuneration system.

As of 2013, global ad spending topped $500 billion, with 20% of that, $100 billion, Internet advertising. Projected growth rates were roughly 5%/year.

http://adage.com/article/global-news/10-things-global-ad-mar...

That amounts to roughly $90 per person on Earth (total), or just under $20/person for Internet advertising. Or, if you felt (with some justification) that the roughly 1 billion people in the developed world (North America, Europe, Japan, Australia/New Zealand) might credibly be given the bill for this, $100/year.

That is: if you were taxed $100/year, all online content would be free.

Total OECD population is actually 1.27 billion, and GDP (that is, income), $48.8 trillion. Or $38,500 per person (roughly). Allocating our $100 proportionately by income would mean you'd pay $100 per $38,500 of personal income, a rate of 0.26%. Consider that a content tax.

Producers of content (online) could divide that pie. I don't have a strong sense of how many people are engaged in producing online material as a substantively full-time job. If it were a million people, this fund would suffice to provide a six-figure income to each.

The US BLS maintains a number of statistic related to labour, organised as a bureau (one might even think they could create an acronym based on this concept...). Including of professional authors and writers in the United States (roughly 1/3 of the OECD).

Median pay is $59k, total positions 136,500.

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/writers-and-a...

This includes advertising copywriters, but excludes journalists, editors, and technical writers.

Editors add another 117k positions, reporters 54k, technical writers 52k, though presumably most of these work directly for (or contract to) organisations needing specific technical writing tasks. Incomes are roughly comparable with writers, though generally lower, particularly for journalistys.

So we're at about 300,000 positions. My 1 million worldwide off-the-cuff estimate doesn't look too far from the mark. And we're doubling the average wage.

I haven't included musicians or film-makers, two other significant categories. But a bundled payments system would more than adequately finance these at least in a broadcast revenues substitution, from what I've seen here.

And yes, there are plenty of details over specific remuneration allocations. The point here is to show that replacing present ads spend would more than cover existing creative talent compensation.

Then you added tracking cookies that followed me wherever I went.

Then you added sound to your ads.

Then you added video.

Then you added full screen popups, seizure-inducing flashing ads and banners that mimic'ed Windows alerts.

Then you added transparent Facebook "like" buttons over GUI elements.

You created the ad blocker phenomenon, not me.

That should have read 'the internet' not 'the web', otherwise it is pretty accurate.

  > Although I’m a fervent Twitter user and couldn’t do
  > without it, I am fundamentally unsympathetic to their
  > plight. Why? Because they don’t even allow me to pay.

I, too, wish we could find a way out of the current mess. Most of the comments here seem to be focusing on the content publisher aspect of things, but I believe free services like Twitter (and Google, etc) are an even greater problem because of their important utility and limited alternatives.