One Hand Clapping

Rupert Murdoch has been making a lot of noise lately about charging for the right to view content on his web sites. He seems to get quite a bit of publicity from his tirades, which I guess is a good thing for him – after all, he has to make some money to pay for Myspace.

But while the media is discussing whether his scheme to charge for access will work or only hurt his media empire, most of the discussion is missing the point, because they assume we are all strict followers of copyright laws, and if we happen on a bit of news which came from one of Murdoch’s papers we would stop reading it, or immediately write him a check and get a subscription.

If Murdoch was to block completely the Sun (in the UK), the New York Post, and as far as I am concerned the Wall Street Journal, he would be doing the public a favor. Ditto for his TV and Satellite services. But that is beside the point. If we assume that his content is worth paying for, say $100 a year, what is to stop someone in Belize, Isle of Man, or another country where copyright enforcement is a bit lax, from shelling out said $100, then offer them for $1 a year to subscribers? This should be a pretty good business proposition for the pirate, AND for his subscribers, too.

Which is why I doubt pay walls would work. I suspect that even the Wall Street Journal, which is mentioned as a site that ’successfully’ charges for membership, is only prospering because the people who read it don’t really pay for it – they charge it to their employer – banks, hedge funds, etc.

I think that there is a need for new income distribution, which compensates content providers for their expenses and lets them make a profit. Pay walls, however, are not going to work – they will make more money to third party illegal aggregators than to the news media. But that is a subject for another blog.

Recently I found myself in an unexpected situation. One of my Facebook friends became friend with an individual who, in my view, is an intolerant and rude person. I decided I did not want this person to keep track of what I do on Facebook, and so I looked into my options.

The easiest option was to de-friend my original friend. But that would be throwing the baby with the wash water, ban my friend from my profile, and also insult this friend. Besides, who knows how many other mutual friends we have.

The second option, which I am using now, was to limit access to friends only. This solution works – my friends can see my profile, but THEIR friends can not – but is not ideal. It prevents my friends from seeing tags or comments made by other friends on my wall. Since Facebook is all about communication and discovering new friends, this runs counter to its purpose, but I guess it is better than letting undesirable elements access my personal stuff.

The last option, which I may yet explore, is to create groups and set each with different settings. I can give some friends total access, and limit others.

What I would really wish I could do is block access to non-friends. This would be a nice feature, and I hope that Facebook will look into it. Here is how it should work: if one of my friends associates with the wrong crowd, I would click or right-click on their offending friend, select ‘Block’ and voila – the banned person would not be able to view anything associated with my page. Call it asymmetric friendship.

Twitter has such a system – I don’t have to follow people who follow me, and vice versa. I can block people who decide to follow me – especially those who offer me viagra, cheap Rolex watches, or redirect to sex sites. Why doesn’t Facebook adapt such an approach too? It would make it such a better tool for disseminating information – or not.