Wake up and smell the e-coffee

Jaron Lanier

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In addition to being written in an extremely irritating and self-centered fashion, Jaron Lanier’s “Pay me for my Content” boasts an extremely trivial and unrealistic argument regarding charging for Internet content.

Specifically, Lanier essentially states that we’ve created this monster that is robbing people of income because it provides nearly everything for free.

Lanier is basically spitting in the face of what makes the Internet such a priceless resource. Free, easily accessible information (from websites like Wikipedia) and other good and services are leading a revolution and businesses simply need to catch up with the technology, instead of trying to ruin it as suggested by Lanier.

In fact, many businesses and industries are doing just that: putting the Internet to work for them. In addition to advertising revenues, companies of every variety are finding ways to make money online. For instance, major newspapers such as the Gazette, National Post and New York Times, have special online services that are only available to subscribers. Similarly, the music industry has responded to free online downloading by selling their work on itunes for a small fee, in addition to other products available for sale online. Ironically, everyone speaks of the Internet as killing the music industry, but in 2007, the industry did exactly what no one thought it would: it turned a profit.

Moreover, the author essentially accuses the Internet of robbing artists and writers. While I respect these professions and think that both contribute extremely important things to society, it’s not as though people (most people anyway) go into those fields to become rich. If anything, the Internet is doing them a huge service by allowing their work to be published for free and providing massive exposure. Think of all the advantages that come with that? It’s just huge.

Quite simply, Lanier’s arguments are extremely unrealistic – I seriously doubt that people would be OK with paying for something they were getting for free already. Moreover, why should they? Who’s he to state that businesses, artists and writers are all suffering because of the Internet. Where’s his research? I didn’t see any stats or sources included in his article.

In all honesty, Lanier sounds whiney, out-dated and just plain out-of-touch when making the statements present in his “Pay me for my Content” article.