3 ms·

I guess I don't understand what's supposed to be so great about this. Youtube is going to the cable subscription model. Hooray? Everyone knows that the next fe

I guess I don't understand what's supposed to be so great about this. Youtube is going to the cable subscription model. Hooray? Everyone knows that the next few years is about consumers "cutting the cord" from cable bundles so they can pay the same amount for bundled streaming services. So Youtube is joining the list of paid streaming services. Not surprising, or exciting. Everyone already seems to acknowledge that paid streaming services will go the same way cable TV went: first you're paying for no ads, but in a few years you're paying with ads, too. This goes beyond "not exciting" and right to "bad for consumers." The only big question for me is, if "information wants to be free" really is baked into the digital world... who's going to do to Youtube, what Youtube did to cable TV?

mc32 11y ago
Brand's complete quote is more illustrating of the dilemma: "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other"
- dingaling 11y ago
  > On the other hand, information wants to be free The original context of this axiom was that information will tend towards making itself free of confines, not cost. The free-beerness is a consequence of this liberation, not the goal.