Content is crap
: A contrarian and thoughtful column by Arnold Kling at TechCentral Station argues that the Creative Commons is not the be-all and end-all of future media; quite to the contrary:
Creative Commons is based on a naive ideology that believes that raw content is gold, which then gets stolen by the evil media companies. In reality, the economics of content are that most of the value-added comes from the filtering process, not the creation process. If you want to overthrow incumbent publishers with Internet-based alternatives, you are better off starting from the assumption that Content is Crap.
The middle of the column is a technical plug for Bayesian filters as a technical means to add value to online content — enhancing the filtering weblogs perform manually — but on the top and bottom of that is an argument in favor of big (if evil) media.
