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> People don't want to pay, at least not knowingly That’s fairly recent. It was (and is) normal to pay for having a phone number. Paying more for making a phon
by Someone 3y ago
> People don't want to pay, at least not knowingly
That’s fairly recent. It was (and is) normal to pay for having a phone number. Paying more for making a phone call was normal, too, as was paying for such services as a phone line that told you the current time or a weather prediction.
It was also normal to pay for having an email address, and most people, to this day, pay for having internet connectivity.
I think it’s more that people object to moving from ‘free’ to paid. If most people pay for a service, they’ll accept that as the way it is.
For example, I think
people would happily pay $1 of more a month for GPS, if it never hadn’t been free.
- denton-scratch 3y ago> That’s fairly recent. No, it's not. In the early days, everything on the internet was free. Before 1996, commercial activity on the internet was forbidden.
- vidarh 3y agoI ran one of many commercial ISPs in 1995 and we founded ours out of frustration with the available commercial ISPs before us. AFAIK the first commercial ISP dates to around '89. But I don't think the fact the internet once had restrictions on commercial activity really makes much difference to the argument above other than in the details, given the argument was broader than about the net.
- denton-scratch 3y agoOh, by "on the internet", I meant internet services. Sure, it cost money to get connected! So I read the argument above as being about internet services; not hardware or connectivity, that would make it hard to understand.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vidarh 3y agoThere were commercial services on the Internet before that too, but note the comment also talked about e.g. phone services, and so more broadly about paying for services, not just internet.