{"id":97,"date":"2008-06-13T00:01:56","date_gmt":"2008-06-13T07:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=97"},"modified":"2008-06-12T21:20:49","modified_gmt":"2008-06-13T04:20:49","slug":"the-end-of-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=97","title":{"rendered":"The End of the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

By 2012 there may be 2,000 web sites in the world. Tops. You’ll have to pay to see each one. That’s how things will go when the big media companies and their pets in Washington get their way on so-called net neutrality<\/em>.
\n
\nSomeday you may see an ad like this in a newspaper:
\n\"\"
\nYes, that ad will be in newspaper because that’s the only way you’ll be getting your daily does of news and information. And that’s the key to this whole thing: You will, once again, be forced to up your newspaper, magazine, and television viewing because the thing that’s competing with those former profit-centers is the free<\/em> Internet. The media companies want you to pay for that stuff. Again.<\/p>\n

I must confess that I have mixed feelings.<\/p>\n

The Internet as a profit system is broken. The mistake was made long ago when the click-through rate on an ad was set to the ridiculously low price of $0.001 per click. It should have been a 10 percent commission, but no. That mistake set the pace for low to no revenue on what should have been a gold mine.<\/p>\n

So, for example, say I make $10 for selling my own books and other stuff on this web site. That’s typical for me; my goal isn’t to make money here but at best to have the money pay for the web site. Even so, had the pricing system been set up properly, the fees I get should be more like $1,000. That’s what a “real” reseller would make on the same transactions, but I get ripped off because I sell stuff through a web site. Ditto for the big guys as well.<\/p>\n

If the Internet dies, then selfishly I’d make a lot more money. That’s because all the free information, references, and sources on the Internet would dry up overnight. People would be forced to again turn to the bookstores for information like they haven’t done in 10 years or longer.<\/p>\n

In fact, I just got an e-mail from a reader in India. He was angry because he had to buy my books instead of getting them free “like everyone else” on the Internet. No one makes even 0.1\u00a2 on a sale when some doofus is giving the stuff away \u2014 books, movies, television. That hurts the big companies and they fight back. And that’s the real reason behind “net neutrality.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By 2012 there may be 2,000 web sites in the world. Tops. You’ll have to pay to see each one. That’s how things will go when the big media companies and their pets in Washington get their way on so-called net neutrality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}