What She Means Is “Access”…

What She Means Is “Access” Will Cost.

Factiva CEO: News Will Cost in Two Years



“Consumers will be coughing up for all online media content by 2004, according to Factiva CEO Clare Hart, who sees a two-year turnaround for ISPs to get with the paid-for-content program….


According to Hart, consumers do not want to pay for online content because they have been trained not to, whereas business users are used to putting their hands in their pockets for particular information.

‘I think that the media has trained the online consumer that there is no value in what they publish,’ Hart said. ‘In two years we will see a turnaround in the consumer market. It?s going to take some time for publishers to build the infrastructure to bill consumers. In the meantime, consumers are going to learn that they have to pay, business users on the other hand have know this for a long time.’ Analyst group AMR Interactive said media companies are almost as unanimous in their insistence that paid content is the only way forward as Internet users are in their unwillingness to come up with the cash.” [ZDNet, via The Virtual Acquisition Shelf & News Desk]


If Hart is right about this to any degree, then it’s going to cause an even bigger rift between publishers/aggregators and libraries. Expect libraries to continue being the hot cyber-battleground as everyone works through the digital rights management & fee-based model versus fair use & information in the “commons” debate.

[The Shifted Librarian]