The comic geniuses at CollegeHumor.com have really hit the nail on the head with this musical romp through the (mostly ad-supported) web, a take-off on “Maria” from the musical West Side Story. Besides showcasing a number of great ad-supported services, the clip really hits the nail on the head by acknowledging that “There is No Free Lunch“: The quid pro quo of advertising supports the plethora of online content and services Internet users take for granted.
Pandora, I just found a website called Pandora…
Pandora! type it in and there’s music playing
watch the ads and it’s almost like paying
Berin Szoka / Berin is the founder of TechFreedom. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation and Director of PFF's Center for Internet Freedom. He covers Internet and media policy issues including privacy, advertising, neutrality, cybersecurity, free speech, child safety, and various other efforts to regulate the Net.
Berin was elected in 2010 to the Steering Committee of the DC Bar Association's Computer & Telecommunications Law Section. Before joining PFF, he practiced communications, Internet and satellite law as an Associate in the Communications Practice Group at Latham & Watkins LLP. Previously, he practiced at Lawler Metzger, a boutique telecommunications law firm in Washington and clerked for the late Hon. H. Dale Cook, Senior U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma.
A recognized expert on the legal and regulatory issues associated with space commercialization, Berin is a member of the FAA's Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC). He is a Director, and former Chairman, of the Space Frontier Foundation, a citizens' advocacy group founded in 1988 and dedicated to opening the space frontier by enabling "NewSpace."
He received his Bachelor's degree in economics from Duke University and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as Submissions Editor of the Virginia Journal of Law & Technology.
In the sense that someone has to pay for the basic costs of running Wikipedia, no. The Wikimedia Foundation garnered nearly $2.3 million in direct contributions in 2007.
Now, I'm a big fan of non-profits. In fact, I work at one and run another! There's certainly a place for volunteer-based community organizations like Wikipedia. But anyone who thinks that we'd get by just fine with only that model is delusional. Restricting the amount of funding available for online content and services would have serious consequences for consumers, culture and media.
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~tblee Tim Lee
Well obviously it's true that someone has to pay for any given online service. But I've always understood “there's no free lunch” to be making a stronger and more specific claim: that lunches are never free to the recipient: i.e. that if you accept a “free” lunch, there's probably an implicit quid pro quo. (listen to a sales pitch or a sermon, sleep with the donor, etc) This clearly isn't how Wikipedia works. Yes, someone has to pay for the servers, but that “someone” isn't the typical Wikipedia user. The overwhelming majority of Wikipedians never give the site a dime, and yet they can reasonably expect Wikipedia to continue to be available for the foreseeable future.
I don't disagree with your broader point about advertising, but I think it's overstating the case to say there's no free lunch. Free lunches are rarer than we'd like, and as a result, we shouldn't encumber business models built around quid pro quo relationships. But I also think it's important to acknowledge that there are a ton of free lunches out there, courtesy of a wide variety of organizations from Wikipedia to Craig's List to Google.
Agreed. I'll try to work in the “Tim Lee Caveat” in the future: I'm not denigrating community based or other “free” (i.e., no-fee) sites. I'm just trying to point out that advertising continues to be the mother's milk of media in this country, as it has been since the days of colonial newspapers.
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~tblee Tim Lee
I might have been nitpicking. I certainly agree with the general point about advertising.
http://bennett.com/blog Richard Bennett
It wouldn't surprise me if one day Wikipedia had to turn to ads to cover its ever-increasing operational costs. Unlike Linux, which is supported by a number of deep-pockets hardware vendors who use it as a component of their systems, there's no business case for a free “encyclopedia.”
Indeed, Richard, I suspect that what's holding back Wikipedia from incorporating multimedia on a wider scale is hosting and bandwidth costs. The Wikimedia Foundation announced earlier this year that it would start allowing users to upload video clips: http://mashable.com/2009/06/19/wikipedia-to-add…
If Wikipedia is going to grow beyond its current text-heavy form, its costs will rise and they'll need to find some way to pay for that. If anti-advertising fanatics block efforts to incorporate ads into the site, Wikipedia will have to raise more money through donations (perhaps through more in-your-face fundraising drives, which can be at least as “annoying” as any ad) or just throttle innovation on the site.
Again, there is no free lunch. Somebody has to pay for everything.
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.