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> Isn't that what we effectively have, with so much of the Internet's value either locked in Facebook's garden or beholden to Google? No, because you can downl

> Isn't that what we effectively have, with so much of the Internet's value either locked in Facebook's garden or beholden to Google? No, because you can download the entirety of Wikipedia, including its edit history and discussion. Also, you can download a not insignificant number of primary sources through both sci-hub and various other sources like Project Gutenberg, IMSLP, etc. Add to that all the things that swell to prominence on Bittorrent trackers whenever the Streisand effect is in play. I have a hard time seeing that content disappearing any time soon. But I also have a hard time seeing how that content would have been aggregated in the first place if you had little micropayment barriers between all the things.

occultist_throw 9y ago
When I was much younger and more naive about how the US and capitalism works, I thought that it would be a splendid idea to be able to make money on my thoughts, experiments, and doings. And I thought that it too would be a great idea to be able to leverage others' works, pay them, and build on them. And now, I do just that. Except there's no money changing hands. That's open source for you. Now, if Xanadu's ideas did come to fruition, then I would expect everything to have a paywall on it. And the worst/regular experience would be pages of pages of aggregate sentences, with each few words being a cent or 2. The pages themselves would be >$1 each to download. Instead of trying to trick browsers and people into spyware - it would be tricking people into automatic slow-reloading links that would cost a few cents... And would continuously reload treating unsuspecting users like a piggy bank. Instead, the world we have is free by default. Only if something is deemed to cost a lot is there a paywall. Things under that threshold use advertising, which is slowly beginning to fail at the seams. That's because content is expensive, but copying isnt. (BTW, my points on the main post are still yoyo-ing around 0 and 1. I wish people would respond rather than try to hide my commentary.)

occultist_throw 9y ago

When I was much younger and more naive about how the US and capitalism works, I thought that it would be a splendid idea to be able to make money on my thoughts, experiments, and doings. And I thought that it too would be a great idea to be able to leverage others' works, pay them, and build on them. And now, I do just that. Except there's no money changing hands. That's open source for you. Now, if Xanadu's ideas did come to fruition, then I would expect everything to have a paywall on it. And the worst/regular experience would be pages of pages of aggregate sentences, with each few words being a cent or 2. The pages themselves would be >$1 each to download. Instead of trying to trick browsers and people into spyware - it would be tricking people into automatic slow-reloading links that would cost a few cents... And would continuously reload treating unsuspecting users like a piggy bank. Instead, the world we have is free by default. Only if something is deemed to cost a lot is there a paywall. Things under that threshold use advertising, which is slowly beginning to fail at the seams. That's because content is expensive, but copying isnt. (BTW, my points on the main post are still yoyo-ing around 0 and 1. I wish people would respond rather than try to hide my commentary.)