Yearning to be Free

by jennifer amey

Well. We thought we had seen dot-bombs in April, but that was just the beginning. Suck.com is gone. Feed.com is gone. Salon.com is disappearing piece by piece, and charging admission. It'll be gone soon too, trust me.

I will miss them. Especially Filler on Wednesdays. But you know what?

I am secretly gleeful that this one (massive) corner of the world has successfully resisted commercialisation. Resisted? Nay, spurned! It will remain a haven for labours of love and obsessive-compulsive weirdoes, because the real beauty of the Internet is the interactivity, the message boards, the fact that any schmoe with too much time on his hands can build a shrine to whatever weird object fills him with delight and/or dread. The number of haiku humour sites, for example, is stunning. Who can resist "The Epic of Gilgamesh retold as Olestra Haiku"? Certainly not I.

Of course, if the reading public is providing the content, they aren't going to be willing to pay for it. I might pay for my weekly Polly Esther dose, but I won't pay to read myself.

And while there is much out there that is worth paying for, it's next to impossible for a site to charge for access when so much is available for nothing. Why buy the loaf? Even those that do attempt to charge will soon discover that it is all too easy for savvy readers to circumvent the system (sometimes it's as simple as substituting "channel" for "www" in the URL), or to simply cut'n'paste and post on a mirror site on the other side of the planet. The On-Line Guitar Archive is a good example; long before the Napster controversy, musos were going after OLGA for hosting thousands of illicit guitar tabs. There are now OLGA mirror sites around the globe—unsueable and unstoppable.

Which of course comes back to the issue of intellectual property rights. What is the value of an idea? How can it be determined? Are we not undermining the importance of our favourite musicians/authors/pundits, et cetera, when we refuse to hand over a penny for their work?

Reminds me of when I was a starving student, quibbling over the four-dollar price tag on a book (second-hand) that I'd been looking for. And realising that I'd spend that amount in ten seconds or less if I was in a bar. Priorities.

I do value my favourite columnists. And I am sad to see them go. But part of me is giggling at the triumph of the original ideals of the Internet. I mean, people used to think that they could stop advertisements from ever encroaching upon the Web. It was to be an idyll free from such vulgar motivations—a place for the free exchange of ideas.

At the current rate of regression, we will soon all go back to Usenet, tapping out IRC commands and squinting at monochrome orange and black (my school colours!) 11" monitors, and starting fires to keep warm by rubbing sticks together. Somebody will see something repulsive on a Christina Aguilera anti-fan site and will exclaim out loud. Perhaps someone nearby will overhear, and wonder: What is that strange noise? And they will discover that it is possible for humans to interact directly, without the aid of electronic devices. At least if they are in the same room.

Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. At any rate, the Internet seems to have actually managed to resist/throw off commercialism, for now at any rate, much as the original information-wants-to-be-free Usenet hippies hoped it would be.

Except for the porn sites, I mean.

Copyright © 2001 Jennifer Amey. All Rights Reserved.