Summary; Topic 5; Online Availability of Content

The advantages and disadvantages of producing online content that is freely available sparked some great points. Thank you to all my peers who posted such thought provoking comments on my blog post – you all left some really intriguing points.

What it comes down to is that most people will fight for what they believe they should have the rights to access to or what they can charge for their own work. Many tax payers will demand the availability of publicly funded work, students will complain that they can’t use the research they want and journalists and private companies will say that they can charge what they like for granted access because they created the content and they need to fund themselves in some form or another.

I don’t want to reiterate my points, (they can all be viewed here, on the post and the comments), but the matter of the fact is that the amount of content is growing rapidly and continuously. This data is the backbone to the knowledge economy in which we live in today and provides valuable resources for educational and learning perspectives, as well as the bloodline for any business. This is because online content produces traffic, which has a significant impact on any industry.

Of course, everything comes at a cost. Producers wouldn’t have a foot to stand on if they didn’t make any money from their work. Many creators find alternative ways to fund their work, such as advertising, sponsorships, etc, but not every content creator will have the availability of such resources.

As I’ve mentioned we live in a knowledge economy and therefore access to a free-flow of information is essential to support our everyday lives. In his blog, Cristian talks about exploring online resources to better oneself in an information-based economy but mentions how we should be concerning ourselves with the availability of the internet. We take the internet for granted but there are many people still out there who do not have everyday access to the world wide web. Should our main priority be to make the internet affordable to everyone?

Back to the availability of content, I predict that there will be more paywalls appearing online, however, I do believe that many creators will still find innovative ways to support their work. Take the music business for example, music is made freely available to listen to on youtube and apps like Spotify, yet music artists and producers still manage to make the ‘big bucks’ through other revenue streams. Creators just have to be clever with their work.

Ultimately, content creators will always do what they want with their own work to reach their own individual gains, whether they be for tangible or intangible rewards.