Mark Day, free content, Chairman Rupert, and the despair within News Corp grows daily as the parasitic bloggers steal their precious bodily fluids

Poor Mark Day is agitated. Cash for content makes sense, he says, as if people who might enjoy content for free are somehow being irrational and perverse.

I guess what he's trying to say is that cash for content makes sense to him and Rupert Murdoch. It doesn't quite make as much sense for viewers of network television or radio, who plough through endless commercials with gritted teeth (or enjoyment, whatever) as a way of making sure their audiovisual entertainment comes at them "free". Trading off a little of their time and their ears and eyes (unless they're off to the fridge to get a beer) so they don't have to sign up to cable TV. Where they pay for the content by subscription and pay to watch commercials.

Just as it seems that some new intertubes models will see subscription services double with offensive, intrusive flash ads and pop ups designed to drive surfers into a frenzy or into the arms of blockers.

What is it about news in the 21st century that makes people so vehemently opposed to paying for it? After all, we pay for everything else—the water we drink, the electricity we use, the phone calls we make, the music we choose, fuel for our cars or tickets to ride on our trains. We even pay for “free” things, such as healthcare.

The instant Rupert Murdoch last week confirmed his plan to introduce charges for News Corporation websites around the world (including The Australian), the blogosphere lit up with condemnation.

I’d say 99 per cent of the reaction was negative, ranging from the adamant “I will not pay, full stop”, to the slightly more wistful “Bye-bye News”.

Well actually there's nothing about content (as opposed to the nebulous notion of news) that makes people vehemently opposed to paying for it as a matter of principle. They might object to paying for crap - like the kind of content you get in many News Corp sites - but last time I counted, we have annual subscriptions to five magazines. No newspapers, but hey I'd rather read a roll of toilet paper than pay for the Daily Telegraph.

No offence intended, no negativity. Just that wonderful American concept called choice. Now compounded and turned into billions of pages which it would take several lifetimes to read or view on the full to overflowing intertubes.

Funnily enough the blogs which seem to have got Mark Day upset might just happen to be News Corp blogs. The only strong reaction to the "pay for content" story I've tracked was when Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt asked their readers if they were ready pony up the cash readies for Chairman Rupert, and most of their readers told them to bugger off.

Most of the rest of the web quietly went about its business, with the general reaction to Chairman Rupert's plan to charge for his content "well good luck with that".

But Mark Day isn't having any of that kind of moderate lack of passion in the blogosphere. First he wants to establish that these bloggers are unrepresentative swill with red back spiders living in their pockets, squawking minority groups with no class who love to dance on graves:

On the face of it, any sensible marketer would fold the tent and move on. But I don’t believe what the bloggers say, and here’s why.

First, people who respond to blogs or website polls do not represent all people and cannot be described as a reliable cross-section of society.

Sure, there are an awful lot of them around the world and they can make a lot of noise.

A large proportion is convinced they hold a special place in cyberspace because they were quick to recognise its capacity to free them from the previously confined spaces of newspapers and/or magazines and their owners who they blame for perceived biases.

They’re knowledgeable about where and how to access their special-interest needs, they’re highly independent and they love it to the extent that many delight in dancing on what they see as the graves of last century’s media moguls.

But they’re not the total market.

Curse you, you noisy mynah bird bloggers, damn you all to squawking hell.

Err, but these blog readers do seem to make up a special group dedicated to reading the likes of Blair and Bolt, and spending an inordinate amount of time commenting and forming a community, as Blair and Bolt gaily link to all kinds of news sources all over the world. So News Corp can boast about squillions of hits.

Just how does this kind of activity fit a "pay for comment" model? Especially as it involves other people and their theoretically copyright content?

Day doesn't bother to contemplate that question, instead preferring to suggest the bloggers are responding to the wrong question, and haven't been given an accurate picture of what will be offered for some cash in the paw:

Is it the same as the existing free service? Or does it have value-adding bells and whistles? If it is perceived to have some value to the potential consumer, then the answer would be different: maybe not a “Yes, please”, but perhaps “I’ll consider it”.

We are not yet at the point where the design and nature of the ubiquitous paid news site is apparent. But, with editorial teams in just about every publishing house on the planet working on it at the moment, it’s getting closer.

I’m not part of one of those teams, so I don’t know what the next generation of newspaper websites will look like, or how the content will be divided between free and pay. But let’s have a stab at it.

Okey dokey, we can say for sure that anything Mark Day proposes will be irrelevant, since he doesn't know what's happening or what will be proposed, but notice how he blithely assures us that every publishing house on the planet is in on the game, and will follow Chairman Rupert down the tunnel of charging for content.

Except of course for the ABC, PBS, the BBC and assorted other large publishing houses who can't or won't charge for content. And once you get a breach in the wall of the dyke of that size, fingers alone won't stop the leakage. And I know where I'll be heading. For free.

But let's see what Day is selling:

First, it will cost you nothing to look. The flow of so-called breaking news that is increasingly seen as a free commodity will continue to be accessible as it is now.

News is, generally, made up of three strands -- the happening, as in a plane crash or terror bomb exploding; the manufactured, as in government or corporate releases of information or propaganda; and the investigated, as in fresh information gleaned from often-reluctant sources which has implications for individuals or society at large.

There would be no point whatsoever in putting breaking news or government announcements behind a pay wall. Everybody has the same information and only the super-rich or stupid among us would choose to pay for a paragraph or two that is freely available everywhere.

But information is wealth, and people who need certain types of information will pay for it. This is the fundamental truth that has driven the growth of the news-gathering industry over centuries.

The trick is to marry the needs of both parties to modern technologies in a manner that is simple, hassle-free and valuable. That means any future pay site, like any consumer product, has to have a unique selling point. It cannot simply be a closed version of what we have now.

Would you pay for a website that bundles fresh, investigated news with the specific kind of information you require?

Well since you ask so politely, no. At least not for a News Corp site like the Daily Telegraph, which offers bugger all information in the way of specific information of the kind I require, and bugger all in the way of bundled fresh investigated news in which I can believe in, or be bothered to read.

Of course it does offer up a rich variety of loons, prize specimens for loon pond, but I don't regard that as an asset. And I see you've already offered up your own leak in the dyke, by providing wriggle room for bludgers and layabout rascals tight with their cash who might just want to read the headlines and then move on. It'll cost nothing to look? Great, so we'll still be keeping free content. Phew, that's great, it somehow suggests "content for free" will continue to make sense.

So how are you going to prize coinage out of the punters' pockets?

If, when you sign up for a subscription, you were able to specify the subjects that interested you -- from showbiz gossip to weather forecasts or the hourly value of your share portfolio -- and if that site were part of a socially networking community that connected family, friends or like-minded people, in the manner of MySpace or Facebook, while at the same time enabling all kinds of commerce -- buying, selling, trading -- would that product be of value to you?

I imagine a lot of responses from committed bloggers at this point would still be "No". But there would also be a lot of people who would see value and would consider it. What remains to be seen is whether there are enough "maybes" willing to give it a go.

Well yes, actually my answer would still be "no". Especially because Chairman Rupert effectively has ruined MySpace through mishandling, while good luck in your desire to take over eBay or any of the other specialist sites - in real estate, cars, and so on - that have made mince meat of Fairfaxes "river of gold" classified advertising.

But good luck with all that, in the hunt for the maybes, where ever they may be. I'm not one of them, but then I gave up hard copy newspapers long ago, and it mainly felt like I'd discovered a way to stop wasting my time and banging my head up against commentariat columnists (only to discover the rich joys of loon pond in later life).

Remember, none of this is compulsory. No one will make anyone pay anything: it is all a matter of choice.

Ah, at last we're back to choice. Did that have anything to do with readers of the New York Times on line choosing not to pay for access to their columnists? Forcing the paper to backtrack and settle for a registration scheme and more eyeballs for advertisers? So what's changed?

Today, some people choose to buy newspapers and get a bundled service of all kinds of news (business, political, sport, lifestyle) plus comics, crosswords, cartoons, advertisements and directories to multiple services.

Others choose not to and are content to let radio and television provide, free of charge, all the news they want in their daily lives.

(Mind you, consumers eventually pay for the advertising that supports these free services through the price of products on supermarket shelves or their taxes.)

Okay so none of this is compulsory, and a lot of it - yippee - is free, but why then have the announcements that have come down from News Corp been phrased in the style of "you will have to pay. Or else"? With the subtext otherwise we will go bankrupt and it's all your fault.

If that's what you've got to offer, here's my caring response. Whatever.

Within the past decade the music industry was facing extinction because internet file-sharing sites made possible the free exchange of songs. But through a combination of the grim enforcement of copyright, uniform action by the music companies and technological advances such as the iTunes micro-payment systems, the industry was able to wrest back control of its product.

The music industry has wrested back control of its product? Only in the alternate universe in which Mark Day lives. Why and I bet, apart from believing in copyrighted watermarked fairies at the bottom of the garden, he reckons the movie industry has also remained in control of its product. Mark, if you ever need a guide to ripping and piracy, don't be a stranger.

The same approach can work for the world's news-gathering organisations. Murdoch's announcement can be seen as an invitation to others to join in the assertion of copyright. The required technology exists and is improving with the approach of the predictive Web 3.0.

Predictive web 3.0? Is that where wanking becomes an integral part of the web? Oh yes you can sell an intelligent robot and predictive software to mugs in search of new paradigms of interactivity, but will that get the cash out of my account and into yours?

As for copyright, it's one of the sweeter ironies that News Corp blogs are in fact the biggest bunch of free loaders, bludgers and misusers of others' copyright material you can find on the web. 

Strip recycled visuals and YouTube footage out of The Punch and it'd be just a host of columns, most recycled from other parts of News Corp. Is there some kind of irony in the way that Casttv's first customer was Gemstar TV, back when Chairman Rupert's news Corp was the principal shareholder in Gemstar? So Chairman Rupert was buying services from a company that was engaged in wholesale misuse of so-called "free" content.

The funny thing is, newspapers and television networks have always ripped each other off, and recycled stories (and now heavily rely on the likes of Reuters and AAP), and they've only started to get agitated about it now that their customers can do it too. But who's going to maintain a firewall of copyright material on the web, complete with endless legal actions of the music industry kind?

It is clear a free internet has the power to wreck the economic model of newspapers and news-gathering itself. But the irony is, if that were to happen, the most valuable elements of news -- that which is investigated, tested and credible -- would disappear because of a lack of funding. Ultimately, that serves no one. Society would be the loser.

And so we return to the ultimate argument. Pay for us, or we'll disappear, and you'll be the loser. Unfortunately, I can imagine a world without News Corp or Chairman Rupert and it doesn't disturb me in the slightest. So go on, disappear ...

There will be other faster, cleverer mushrooms which will sprout up in the foot prints of the disappeared dinosaurs.

Sure loon pond will be the poorer. But it's a sacrifice I'm prepared to make ...

Meantime good luck finding mug punters who want to keep News Corp in the style to which it was once so accustomed ... Yes, good luck with all that.