Why is the fault even the Post's?
The Dingell family (or Dingell himself) decided to sell the piece to the Post, a revenue-generating newspaper that uses a paywall. They had many other options. They probably could have gotten another senator to read it into the Federal Register, where it would have been available to all. But they made their choice.
The Free and Open Internet
41–50 of 53 posts
Re: The Free and Open Internet
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're a data management platform for public infrastructure. Think domo or mulesoft meets apigee for government. It certainly hasn't been easy, but I'm proud we've made a lot of progress since that rejection email! :)
I'm curious, did you get other VCs to fund you?
Re: The Free and Open Internet
#43> Even the Washington Post’s owner Jeff Bezos knew to publish his words that he wanted everyone to read on an open platform like Medium.
Medium is definitely not free. I always get paywalls when I visit it.
Re: The Free and Open Internet
#44I don’t see any way to solve the paywall problem except to have Spotify for news/written content.* Even then there are too many hands reaching into my wallet to the point where I just don’t read some things. *Until there is a universal web currency that is low friction to send like some of the crypto currencies.
>*Until there is a universal web currency that is low friction to send like some of the crypto currencies.
I see this idea pop up every day now. It blows my mind that we don't have it yet. It seems so obvious, why hasn't someone written it yet? Can someone just pick a cryptocurrency that doesn't have high transaction fees and make a few browser plugins? Add your payment address to ./well-known or something?
Re: The Free and Open Internet
#45> Sure I could have purchased a subscription to the Washington Post, but I don’t believe opinion pieces should be behind a paywall and I certainly don’t believe that something like Dingell’s last words should be behind a paywall. Quite cheap for a millionaire (billionaire?)! Just think about that for a second. It’s comical. Newspapers were never free. Ever. People subscribed or bought them in a vending machine or new…
I sure hope Twitter pays whoever curates Moments and writes trend descriptions.
Re: The Free and Open Internet
#46That free model that Wilson louds got us to this point in the first place. Over last twenty years that Wilson been making money investing in free Twitter, etc., thousands of people lost jobs in journalism, etc. He has no solution or suggestion, just ranting. Isn't he the freemium guy anyhow?
add to your points this gem: >> places like Twitter and Medium that remain open and free. WHAT? Perhaps only in the most literal sense of "they don't make you pay money to read", but that's not really what people mean when they talk about open and free...
People are starting to see through this BS that Wilsons of the world been preaching and profiting from for a quarter century. I only care for my money, not your job. I also prefer surveillance driven ad model that was never free and will never be free.
Re: The Free and Open Internet
#47Thanks for the article! Unfortunately I don’t think Medium is an “open” platform, there are paywalls there too.
The other thing I think we need to be careful about is having a “federated” source for the paywalls. To me, this is a scary idea. Unless the solution is open source and completely encrypted, it will just give whichever companies that do it more access to your data, on what you read, when you read it, and what you pay for.
Re: The Free and Open Internet
#48I don’t see any way to solve the paywall problem except to have Spotify for news/written content.* Even then there are too many hands reaching into my wallet to the point where I just don’t read some things. *Until there is a universal web currency that is low friction to send like some of the crypto currencies.
>*Until there is a universal web currency that is low friction to send like some of the crypto currencies. I see this idea pop up every day now. It blows my mind that we don't have it yet. It seems so obvious, why hasn't someone written it yet? Can someone just pick a cryptocurrency that doesn't have high transaction fees and make a few browser plugins? Add your payment address to ./well-known or something?
I see that coinbase seems to be pushing the 0x/ETH as the solution, and maybe I just don't understand how the 2 are supposed to work, but it seems clunky to me. By that I mean I can't abstract the concept easily based on things I have read...
Re: The Free and Open Internet
#49I think cryptocurrency-based microtransactions would be perfect for paying for online content. If browser-based wallets become a thing, making a $0.01 payment to read an article would be easy, painless and potentially sustain online media.
Re: The Free and Open Internet
#50> Sure I could have purchased a subscription to the Washington Post, but I don’t believe opinion pieces should be behind a paywall and I certainly don’t believe that something like Dingell’s last words should be behind a paywall. Quite cheap for a millionaire (billionaire?)! Just think about that for a second. It’s comical. Newspapers were never free. Ever. People subscribed or bought them in a vending machine or new…
Moreover, WaPo gives a few free articles per month so it's not like this is a one-off where he wanted to read a WaPo article. I can't fathom being in an industry like VC and not having a subscription to all the major papers even just to skim articles that mention portfolio companies.