Title: Free, but at what cost ?
Category: Internet
Tags: internet, société
Summary: Or how you may be at loss in spite of not paying anything
Slug: la-gratuite
Lang: en
Status: draft

<a title="By Tom Morris (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFree_Beer.jpg"><img width="512" alt="Free Beer" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Free_Beer.jpg/512px-Free_Beer.jpg"/></a>
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Internet is a strange world, where almost all of us have taken strange habits. One
of them in particular has raised into a principle that few will question :
free of charge access to anything. Being able to access any resource we want
without paying a single cent has become so natural that one almost forgets
what implications it has.

I will not spend much time beating a dead horse with another variation of the
argument that is usually spit out regarding this topic : "If you're not paying,
you are the product". While it's extremely important to wonder why Google "offers"
us a mailbox that other service providers make us pay at least 1€/month, or why
Google or Facebook let us store gigabytes of pictures or videos free of charge,
my focus will not be on free (as in free beer) services. Anyone is free (as in
free speech) to consciously save a few euros per month at the expense of their
privacy or their freedom, after all.

I would rather address the widespread expectation of free access to content,
which is obviously related to the previous topic, for there would be no reason
to use those free service if they did not provide free content. But it raises
a different concern, which is that of the retribution of the content producer.
A cumulative profit of [30 billion dollars in 2016][1] is some rather strong
evidence that Google and Facebook live perfectly well in spite of not requiring
a single cent from us ; but it is much harder to explain how one could require
having content that is both of quality AND free of charge.

For that demand seems rather inconsistent once transposed in "real life" :
does one expect high quality articles in free newspapers ? Does one expect a
free TV channel to produce content whose primary goal would be quality instead
of popularity ? Would one prefer to watch - free of charge - a movie cut by
several ad breaks than to rent it or watch it in a cinema ? Wasn't one used to
pay for access to encyclopedic knowledge ? Did one expect a complete stranger to
offer us some of his own time to spread his knowledge, without any counterpart
(be it money or a plain old human exchange) ?

Yet this demand can be rather well explained, even when considering things
beyond the trivial observation that there is - apparently - nothing to lose
when you acquire a good free of charge. For a long time, access to content was
made by getting a copy of it (a copy of such book, a VHS tape, a vinyl record,
a feature article published in such newspapers), but Internet has shattered that
model of diffusion ... for it allows
[infinite multiplication of copies of content][2]. Therefore it seems completely
vain to try and restrict access to content, and value is produced through other
means : e.g. accessibility (being able to access one's content from anywhere
without caring about its storage, like Dropbox, Google Drive, Netflix,
Spotify, ...) or simply the ability to select quality content among a
never-ending stream of production.

But that demand, while duly justified, leaves behind the question of the content
producer's retribution ... which is not much of a problem if their motivation is
such that the very idea of making consumers pay is secondary or even hurtful :
e.g. if it's a public institution whose mission is producing content that would
be accessible to everyone. Or if it's an activist association, or a company's
public relations department, whose main goal is spreading a message, or ideas.
One can also imagine some non-legal but seemingly moral deals when it's a
'mainstream' actor that can somehow be paid in "real life" (e.g. "I download
that artist's records for free but I pay to see him/her in concert every time
he/she comes in my town so that's OK"). But the web is filled with tutorials,
opinion pieces, background analysis, courses, popular scientific information
features, ... that are written or directed by Internet users for whom it is not
the main activity, and rightfully so.

Such content appear in countless formats and their topics are infinitely various,
but the overwhelming share of those productions share a common characteristic :
their consumers enjoy them free of charge, and they do not see why it should be
otherwise. And yet ... Some amateur content producers are able to touch
dozens of thousands (or even more) of their fellows on a regular basis,
spreading their knowledge or inviting them to think. Even if their viewership
is less that that, is it not the kind of truly value-creating activity that it
would be fair and desirable to promote and support, and therefore ... to
remunerate (at the very least to allow it to continue) ? Would it not be a gain
for society as a whole if those amateurs were allowed to fully focus on what
they patently do so well, or even to turn it into a full-time job ? Would it not
be worth changing our habits in order to help them towards that goal ?

[1]: http://www.valuewalk.com/2017/05/tech-giants-google-apple-facebook-amazon-microsoft/
[2]: https://www.edge.org/conversation/better-than-free
