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The "ought" can be taken quite literally with an appeal to Kantian ethics and the categorical imperative. Can you universalize the sentiment that your special s

The "ought" can be taken quite literally with an appeal to Kantian ethics and the categorical imperative. Can you universalize the sentiment that your special snowflake information site deserves users registering and signing up for a newsletter? There are at least millions of such sites out there and each user will encounter tens if not hundreds of thousands over a lifetime of browsing and searching the web. No user can possibly maintain hundreds of thousands of unique registrations and subscriptions or read that many newsletters. The only universalizable alternatives are platformization of everything, so people maintain registrations at Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook and those are now the only information sources accessible to anyone, or sites that contain information allow at least some of it to be accessed without requiring a registration or subscription that is unique to their site. Potentially some sort of universal SSO could solve the problem, but it would require universal buy-in from individual sites and would make privacy virtually impossible. Note that offering such a thing, if a user decides your information content is really worth it after getting some sample and coming to trust and know you, is different from requiring it up front to see anything at all.

azinman2 5y ago
If you're appealing to some higher-level philosophical ideals, then that should be both identified and supported by argument. There's no real argument here, especially one that acknowledges the autonomy of the individual gatekeepers who possess the information you want, or acknowledgement that it costs them money to create such information that you wish to consume. It's a bit like saying 'education ought to be free, food ought to be free, health care ought to be free, and housing ought to be free.' Ok sure, that sounds lovely, but how? And if you method of how is simply stealing and cheating, well, then that's not so lovely, is it? I doubt the scale that you suggest (especially the newsletter argument, which is typically free to sign up, rather than the monthly subscription that this site is really getting around), and if that was the case, then perhaps the solution is to find a better funding and browsing model that appeals to all rather than saying the solution is to circumvent against the information providers wishes. There have been various attempts so far from Apple News, Flipboard, Brave's browser, and briefly Google's micro-transactions for news, and we probably need more innovation in this space versus less. Would you have made such an argument previously at the magazine stand? That no one could possibly buy all the magazines to get all the information? Just because Google's index and search is free doesn't mean the rest of the world ought to be.
- mdavis6890 5y ago
  I think everything should be free, and nobody should have to produce it.

azinman2 5y ago

If you're appealing to some higher-level philosophical ideals, then that should be both identified and supported by argument. There's no real argument here, especially one that acknowledges the autonomy of the individual gatekeepers who possess the information you want, or acknowledgement that it costs them money to create such information that you wish to consume. It's a bit like saying 'education ought to be free, food ought to be free, health care ought to be free, and housing ought to be free.' Ok sure, that sounds lovely, but how? And if you method of how is simply stealing and cheating, well, then that's not so lovely, is it? I doubt the scale that you suggest (especially the newsletter argument, which is typically free to sign up, rather than the monthly subscription that this site is really getting around), and if that was the case, then perhaps the solution is to find a better funding and browsing model that appeals to all rather than saying the solution is to circumvent against the information providers wishes. There have been various attempts so far from Apple News, Flipboard, Brave's browser, and briefly Google's micro-transactions for news, and we probably need more innovation in this space versus less. Would you have made such an argument previously at the magazine stand? That no one could possibly buy all the magazines to get all the information? Just because Google's index and search is free doesn't mean the rest of the world ought to be.

mdavis6890 5y ago
I think everything should be free, and nobody should have to produce it.