In 1993 the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column on usenet; a 2,000-person mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.
One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed Internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something like, When a 14-year-old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.
I think about that conversation a lot these days.
The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the Internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early ’90s they came up with not just one scheme but several.
One was to partner with companies like America Online, a fast-growing subscription service that was less chaotic than the open Internet. Another approach was to educate the public about the behaviors required of them by copyright law. New payment models such as micropayments were proposed. Alternatively, newspapers could pursue the profit margins enjoyed by radio and TV, if they became purely ad-supported. Still another plan was to convince tech firms to make their hardware and software less capable of sharing, or to partner with the businesses running data networks to achieve the same goal. Then there was the nuclear option: educate the public about copyright law and sue those who break it, making an example of them.
In all this conversation, there was one scenario that was widely regarded as unthinkable: that the ability to share content wouldn’t shrink, it would grow.
Walled-off content would prove unpopular. Digital advertising would reduce inefficiencies, and therefore profits. Dislike of micropayments would prevent widespread use. People would resist being educated to act against their own desires. Old habits of advertisers and readers would not transfer online. Even ferocious litigation would be inadequate to constrain massive, sustained law-breaking.
Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven’t been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile, the people envisioning micropayments and lawsuits, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but as saviors.
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