Blaglash.com

Listen. It’s not that I think everything should be free. Really, it’s not.

Provide me good content for a reasonable price, I’ll make some small internal computations, and if it’s a deal, I’ll pony up.

But what about content that is outdated, is no longer available to the consumer, and is collecting dust in a warehouse some place?

Why do old companies hoard old content?

I haven’t had the time/energy/whatever to keep up on my reading lately, so when I checked out The Howling Fantods today and discovered that the piece of fiction I’ve waited for for two years was published in Harper’s in February, I wanted it.

I wanted it so bad.

And Harper’s has it available on their website for me to view as scanned PDFs.

“How convenient!” I said as I clicked the file.

The problem?

For me to read some scanned PDFs of an article published two months ago (that I can’t go out and buy a hard copy of to read in bed/on the train), I have to first subscribe to a year of the magazine.

Only then will they hand over the files.

My point is this.

This shit’s got to stop.

Why would you assume that just because I’m interested in reading three pages of fiction you’ve published that I would even for a moment consider subscribing to your publication? Am I your target? Do you think I’m that obsessed?

Fuck it, I’m voting for McCain. Twice.

And Harper’s isn’t a rogue agent of content-hoarding.

While I was kind of rough on Hulu on the outset, it proved to be a great resource.

We began the tradition of watching reruns in bed at night. In fact, a lot of people I know started doing this, too.

And Hulu’s advertising model is fucking brilliant.

Sell advertising on reruns (which are no longer viable commercially). Give brands a fully-branded environment that lasts for an entire episode. Give them full 30 second spots. And then allow users to actually click your TV commercial to move to your other branded environment!

That idea’s worth a trillion bazillion dollars.

But now that we’re almost a month into Hulu, something painful has happened.

I’ve run out of shit to watch.

Hulu is adding one of the most brilliant advertising models ever devised on entirely old, irrelevant, and formerly unmonetized content, and they’re putting limits on how much old, formerly valueless content I can watch?

Who is making these decisions?

In defense of both companies, the idea of giving people old useless shit for free is a very new idea.

New ideas are uncomfortable.

So let’s not think about this as a giant leap into the unknown. Rather, let’s keep it simple.

“Do you want to make money from stuff that previously didn’t accrue revenue?”

If your answer is yes, then the answer is retardedly straightforward:

Give the consumer this stuff. For free, since they can’t buy it anyway.

Then monetize it however you please.