Nothing is free. We want everything to be free. But the stuff we think is free — Web surfing, walking down the street, window shopping — cost someone some money somewhere. Computing infrastructure, civic infrastructure, retail development cost someone something.
Companies charge to host Web sites. Cities charge taxes. Retailers sell stuff. There is always an expected rate of return. And it’s becoming accelerated on the Web.
One of the first “pay up” salvos is being fired by a company holding some very valuable emotional data. Kodak announced it will start charging for people to store their photos on its Kodak Gallery site.
Everybody loves their photos. Maybe not enough to pay to print them out. But who is going to risk losing their photos? (Kodak has threatened to delete them if people don’t pay up.)
Before you cry “foul” think about why Kodak provided that site in the first place? It wanted you to order prints of your pictures. It wanted you to send pictures to family members and friends and give them the opportunity to order prints. That just didn’t happen. So now the free ride is ending.
Don’t think that sites that give us access to free stuff — e-mail, news, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Google – aren’t going to be watching what happens with Kodak Gallery. All it takes is one business to successfully charge for what once was free, to end the free ride for everyone.
There’s a great discussion about it here.
What say you? Are you willing to pay?
