4 ms·
This gets to the tollbooth problem. With print subscriptions, the publisher was one clear tollbooth, as unless subscribers paid for delivery, the paper wasn't
by dredmorbius 2y ago
This gets to the tollbooth problem.
With print subscriptions, the publisher was one clear tollbooth, as unless subscribers paid for delivery, the paper wasn't delivered. That was a leaky model --- there were copies circulated at offices, people would bring and leave papers at cafes, they could be read at libraries or private clubs. But generally, a copy of the paper or magazine had to be bought.
The other tollbooth was the newsstand, where individual copies could be bought from either a manned or unmanned site.
With the Internet and Web, the notion of such tollbooths is largely eliminated. As I've suggested several times in this discussion, the two highly obvious tollbooths are either the ISP (with whom the reader has an existing relationship, though less so in the case of, say, public WiFi), or a taxing authority who could assess a payment on all residents of a region (on the basis that media and an informed public contribute to the common weal). Or perhaps other indirect assessments, as with old legal notice requirements (see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41261063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41261063>).
- d_k_h 2y agoOf course there is the small detail of removing agency from the internet user at that point. Maybe I don't want to support local/regional news or maybe that extra fee is going to make the access untenable for me. Beyond that it would devolve into a scenario where entities would begin trying to game whatever system is created to get a cut of the pie. Forced support is not the answer.
- dredmorbius 2y agoAn additional element of my user fee / tax-based support, and one that strongly distinguishes it from a flat-fee assessment as with the BBC or German public broadcasting is that it should be strongly progressive. For a tax assessment this would be based on wealth (e.g., property tax) and/or income. For an ISP-based assessment, the allocation might be more challenging, but a differentiation between business and residential usage (with a higher assessment for businesses, again on a progressive scale), and differentiated rates probably on a neighbourhood / metro region basis (so that a household on the Upper West Side and one in Julesburg, CO, would pay widely differing rates), is what I have in mind. Rationale is that the wealthy have already benefitted mightily from such access, and the poor should not be denied access to media: news, entertainment, books, music, video, whatever. You say "forced". I say enlighted common weal.
- sooheon 2y ago> the poor should not be denied access to media: news, entertainment, books, music, video, whatever. The poor are not denied access this currently. Everything in your argument hinges on the claim that government funded and directed media will be superior to the status quo. Why?