US film producer Harvey Weinstein has criticised media giants Apple and Google for making content available under the guise of “free internet”.

“It’s a nonsensical idea,” he told an audience at the London Film Festival, likening the notion to helping oneself to “free shirts” in a clothing store.

There’s that thing again, confusing the virtual and real worlds; if content can be made virtual then it is made into speech, and speech replicates – it is copied and repeated from individual to individual.

One does not pay a fee to read a poem to your lover – and so, for poets to survive, since the invention of printing we have used books (or other media) as a proxy mechanism to send value / wages / food / thanks to our poets (and other artists) so that they may survive; and we’ve justified and enhanced this proxy by adding value – illustrations, extra verse, commentary, etc.

But now we’re back to the logistics of an older age – in some ways returning to an age before printing, almost before writing, where speech was passed orally or by samizdat copying of the copy it yourself and take the copy variety.

But that was a long time ago and we – Harvey, for instance – have largely forgotten how to live and survive in such an economy; but we are re-learning. One answer is patronage, but part of the joy of the internet is that you can crowdsource that nowadays, which is a lot more pleasant than olden times.

Long may the newness continue – it would be a dire mistake to continue trying to treat the intangible virtual goods of the internet as if they were inherently scarce, uncopyable cotton shirts.

via BBC News – Harvey Weinstein attacks ‘free internet’.