I don’t understand this one still. Information trends toward being free in the digital space because of the zero cost of duplication, but duplication is not the only cost.
Paywalls don’t pretend that the cost of duplication isn’t zero, they just have to be reasonable and frictionless enough that someone will pay for the “original” version rather than go to the trouble of finding the duplicate (which in many cases is duplicated by someone predatory).
Have you read the writing linked in this thread? I took great pains in trying to explain the problem in detail.
In any case, I'm fine with the "selling early access" argument. Just don't pretend that you're selling information.
Yes of course, I’ve read it all. The problem with the reasoning that “all information wants to be free” is that even the information that is free is not free!
If you are downloading that “free” information on your computer, whether that be viewing a screenshot of an article on twitter, or pirating a movie, or reading from a Nostr relay, someone else is footing the bill to make it “free” to you.
Pirated movie sites have a million ads and they are a nightmare and terrible to use. Why? Because even the “free” movies that have broken their paywall chains and “set themselves free”… still have a paywall. You’re just paying for the servers with the annoyance and UX nightmare and accidental clicks on a paywall of a million ads instead of a literal paywall.
Lightning will be see easy, so frictionless, that *almost no* information will be free. The cost of receiving information will trend toward the cost of serving it to you, plus whatever additional cost people are willing to pay to be honest. But you’ll pay that cost with a real paywall. Because the alternative of not paying an easy, instant, and cheap Lightning paywall is to go pay for the content some other way that sucks way more than zapping 10 sats (or however many).
Give me any example of paid content “setting itself free” and I’ll show you the trade off you’re choosing to consume it that way instead of just paying for it.
