From interviews I've seen by those who know him, Murdoch lives in a bubble, an "old newspaper speculator" who doesn't attempt to understand the impact of the Internet.

I welcome his alienation of his online readership.

Something along this line is bound to happen sooner or later.

Giving away your work for free is not much of a business model.

Murdoch has great wealth, power and control,
he might be the catalyst to start this idea.

I agree with this in principle, but today's digital media landscape is proving to be a baffling place for many to try and conduct a profit using older models. Don't get me wrong, I'm a musician who depends on old geezer stuff like BMI publishing money, and prior standards of practice to keep a roof over my head. But I also happen to be sitting in a position to see the benefit that a free exchange of media over the Internet has done for my crew, overall.

A martyr to it is more my thinking, but someone will figure it out. They just have to get us all to agree, across the Internet, upon what is worth paying money to see and hear. Tall order.

Conventional wisdom had it that major record labels, news orgs, and film/tv studios were to transform from makers/distributors, to makers/collectors/arbiters of taste in a Brave New World of shared media.

Yet so few of the big players show savvy in doing this. I'm afraid the iTunes model is going to run straight through the dictums of out-of-touch "new media" leaders for quite some time now.

Can't argue with 99% of that. I just don't think it takes agreement with all users or perhaps not even most users.

I think for the most part people don't generally operate on a level that considers future implications in many cases, and this could be one of them.
I'm thinking along the lines of pay TV. While that's not a great example I believe pay-per-view is. For instance there was a time when all boxing and wrestling matches were broadcast free, including world championship matches. As soon as it was established that some people were willing to pay, it was the end of free. TV people also tried, unsuccessfuly fortunately, in other offerings, like the Olympics. I was happy to see people had apparently wised up.

I'm not sure how this will turn out. I'm convinced the publishers will find some way to turn a profit, as they should, on their product.
As you say, the internet is still a wide open wonderful experience/tool/opportunity that is really still in it's infancy.

What is probably needed is a micropayment system that works and is acceptable to the masses.


The problem of the internet is people expect to get things for free (and they will always be able to get it for free)

One benefit of the internet is huge vast numbers. Pay-per-view prices are usually quite high because of the limited number of customers.

If newspapers started charging very small amounts to access their site, they could make it up with plain volume. You might make pennies per customer but when your customer base is 10s of millions...

maybe combine with several papers, and other sites to make it easier. Sort of like basic cable.

They could also work out arraignments with various ISPs to bundle access.

I think that pretty much is what will happen.

Although I don't like bundled access. You end up paying for things you don't use. I'm already paying the local cable monopoly for hundreds of TV chanels I don't use or want. I'd hate to give the cable folks any further reason to hike their prices.

I think having selection will help make this work. Maybe a model something like PayPal to handle accounts.