Take your pick–an optimistic write-up in Slashdot or Clay Shirky’s pessimism.
The TeleRead take: People just might be more open to the national digital library model if they’re hit in all directions with payments. But will they be hit that way? Or, as Shirky speculates, will free content be just too competitive with the paid variety?
Hard to call that one. Very possibly the greedier members of the content industries will keep buying off congress members and the White House, via campaign donations, to come up with ever-more-restrictive copyright laws to wreak havoc on free content in time. One example of the threat is the stealthy campaign that the greedsters are waging at the international level against the very idea of the public domain. What’s more, rather openly, Rep. Mary Bono and Jack Valenti have called for the extension of copyright to “forever minus one day.” Chip away a little here, a little there, at the ideas of the public domain and fair use; and eventually, yes, whether we like it or not, micropayments and subscription plans will be our only choices for most of the good material not included in public libraries.
There’ll always be free content, but much of it depends on the ability of creators to benefit from either the public domain or fair use. And campaign contributions, not democracy, not technology, may well settle the issue. That is not the future I want, but Hollywood and friends certainly have the cash to buy it. So, like it or not, micropayments just might take off after all–for the wrong reasons.
