{"id":2549,"date":"2010-01-21T21:18:16","date_gmt":"2010-01-21T21:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2549"},"modified":"2010-01-21T21:18:16","modified_gmt":"2010-01-21T21:18:16","slug":"the_end_of_free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2549","title":{"rendered":"The End Of Free"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Years from now, I&#8217;ll be regaling all seven of my blog readers with stories of the salad days of the early-21st century Internet, when free content was abundant. The <i>Times <\/i>just announced that it will charge frequent readers an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/21\/business\/media\/21times.html?ref=technology\">as-yet-undetermined subscription fee beginning in 2011<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/media\/news\/2010\/01\/hulus-most-popular-shows-could-end-up-behind-paywall.ars?utm_source=rss&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=rss\">Hulu also indicated that it would begin charging users<\/a> to access the more popular shows in its catalog. At this rate, I&#8217;ll have start moonlighting as a bartender just to afford my various Internet subscription fees.<\/p>\n<p>This retrenchment of paywalls was probably inevitable. Web advertising is sustainable revenue model for some businesses, but it&#8217;s not enough to support a major newspaper or unlimited video streaming. However, this will only work for a handful of established brands whose content is already highly valued by consumers. I&#8217;ll gladly pay five bucks a month to get unlimited access to the <i>Times<\/i>, but I probably wouldn&#8217;t pay a single penny to the <i>Star Tribune<\/i>. <\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?w=600\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Years from now, I&#8217;ll be regaling all seven of my blog readers with stories of the salad days of the early-21st century Internet, when free content was abundant. The Times just announced that it will charge frequent readers an as-yet-undetermined subscription fee beginning in 2011. Hulu also indicated that it would begin charging users to <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2549' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-F7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}