Could Internet’s free content someday come with cost?

Sometimes the Internet is referred to as the "information superhighway." What if that highway had figurative tollbooths?

Since the Internet became widely accepted, consumers have become spoiled by free content.

Yet, that free online content has been a costly mistake to mass media. Free content — like music downloads, pirated movies and news articles — hurt these various industries' bottom lines.

That free content has fed consumers' insatiable hunger for instantaneous information. It's the sort of greediness that spawned phrases like "Google it."

To fix the mistake, a few new services have been introduced. For the music industry, the main bastion is iTunes; for the film industry, it's probably Netflix or the new 3D craze.
For newspapers, which saw the collapse of a few major publications — like the Rocky Mountain News, which went under a little more than a year ago — there's been no quick response.

One could blame curmudgeon publishers and editors for not accepting the Internet and seeing it as an enemy, or the media corporations that own so many media organizations that they didn't believe the Internet could hurt its collective bottom line.

Nonetheless, by offering free content on topics like politics, business, sports and entertainment, the newspaper industry certainly signed its own death warrant.

To fix the mistake, the industry has mulled over different ideas of charging consumers for its online content.

The Nielsen Company, known mostly for TV ratings, put out a survey nearly a month ago about what consumers would actually pay for online material.

The numbers showed that almost half of consumers surveyed would be willing to pay for online news content, however, about 80 percent said they would not if they could find that content elsewhere for free.

Much to the newspaper industry's chagrin, these numbers are bittersweet. The good news is there is a possibility that people could pay for online information.

The bad news is if that information was available elsewhere, like at wiki sites or blogs, charging for online content would again be signing a death warrant.

For consumers, paying for online information would forever put to rest phrases like "Google it." Instantaneous information would be withheld by dollars and cents, unless of course, that information could be found elsewhere.

What if people had to get used to the idea of purchasing information online? It's foreseeable. But for now, take advantage of cruising without tollbooths.

— Mitchell Woll is a senior journalism major and a sports reporter for The Mirror.