Excellent bit, and as always, he's got to the heart of the problem at the end.

No-one wants to pay for anything. If you tell people that you actually pay for tv shows like Game of Thrones, 50% will call you an idiot and the other 50% will actually express some kind of moral outrage (how dare you give that corporation money!)

The internet has essentially taught everyone that all digital content (movies, music, games, software, etc) should be free.

And a large part of the problem is that most content providers have failed to adapt to this. Instead of experimenting and looking for new ways to monetise their content, they have added increasingly archaic looking artificial barriers in a vain attempt to maintain their old business model. There are a few companies getting things partially right (Valve are mostly there, but could still use some work, and Apples consumers seem to consistently spend money in their app store), but most are failing miserably (especially movies and TV).

I love it when people claim that content providers just refuse to find new ways to get paid...out of sheer laziness. While apparently not having any suggestions as to how to do so themselves.

Virtually the entire internet is nothing -but- experiments in alternative means of monetization. The fact is that there really aren't many options. You can sell access directly (via subscriptions, micro-transactions or some such), or you can sell advertising. Neither of which appear to be sustainable strategies; as soon as the content is made available to a few (or before), it'll be stolen and distributed for free, and advertising has been getting less and less profitable for a decade (since about the time the market got saturated, and there were no newbies left to click on the ads).

You really can't sell "support" contracts to content. I suppose you could sell crappy merchandise, like action figures and plushies, but that's wanting content creators to do something other than creating content to be able to pay the bills. Not a good trade-off, IMO.

Note, I don't have any answer either, but I'm not about to lay "a large part of the problem" on the content creators.They have -every- incentive to solve the problem...unlike the consumers, who have plenty of incentives to -be- the problem.

@Stormsinger, then why can't I buy the music or tv shows I want from Amazon?

How come hulu or netflix aren't available in my country? I've said it before, I am happy to spend money on the content I want, just make it available to me for a reasonable price (i.e. not nearly double what people in the US are paying for it http://www.steamprices.com/au/topripoffs)

At what point is it my fault that there is literally no legal way for me to purchase the content I want due to an arbitrary geographical restriction?

So if the entire internet is an experiment in alternative monetization, it's a dismal fucking failure.

You want some examples that work?

Steam Sales
Louis CK selling his entire show for $5
Kickstarter (hell Star Citizen alone)

Some people will always choose free. Fine, maybe they just can't afford it, and telling them to just not watch it is never going to work. Forget those people. Focus on the ones who believe that good content deserves rewarding. Make it easy for them to access your content (reasonable price, no drm or arbitrary restrictions) and they will pay.

Trying to stop piracy is pointless. It's out there and as I said, someone people genuinely have a moral issue with paying for content (the OSS zealots for example). Just assume it's going to be pirated (it already is!) and make it easy for those of us who want to pay for it to get it.

One of the companies I worked for, their whole advertising gimmick was basically Native Advertising. The ads were formatted to look like that publication's news stories. There was a small banner at the top that said "Paid advertisement" but if you missed that, the rest of the ad read like a newspaper or magazine entry. Complete with interviews with people in the company or former government officials and the like. There would be of course a special offer for the readers of this paper at the end, making it seem far more personalized than it was. One felt a bit dirty sending things to the people who were duped into paying $20 for a State $2 bill that had a static sticker over it to make it look like it was some sort of official thing, and of course that was a subscription, so they'd get taken to the cleaner many more times...

The answer to most of your questions is what I already stated. The internet is full of experiments in monetization. Notice the plural. None of them have proven successful over a broad range of content, or location. Since damned near every country has it's own legal restrictions, I think it's pretty obvious why there's no single system to work for them all. The same goes for various types of content. What works for games isn't really going to work for music, or text.

And I don't think I ever suggested trying to stop piracy, or deal with those who'd rather steal than support the artists. I gave up on those a long time ago...but I have no problem with calling those who steal thieves, especially when there -are- other alternatives. Don't like the name, don't do the deed.

I doubt you're ever going to see one new strategy to rule them all (welcome to the balkanized world). If we do get one new system...it'll be because the plutarchs won, and we'll be more worried about buying our water than getting our games or movies.

@ChaosEngine

A bit off-topic, but you can get access to Netflix in pretty much any country that has internet access if you use the Hola unblocker extension for either Firefox or Chrome. We use it here in Japan with my old PC hooked up to our HDTV via HDMI and love it.

More on-topic, this video is specifically addressing news--no one is willing to pay for news because thanks to the Internet and all the ways we can interact with it (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), "news"--as in just the facts--is freely available in seconds moments after it occurs.

Of course, really good reporters don't just provide the facts but also provide background, context, and sometimes insightful analysis of the situation. But I'm not sure the majority of people care about that stuff which is why hiding it behind a paywall just isn't profitable.

I don't know what the solution to this problem is. We need veteran reporters who are free to report on the happenings in the world without external pressure to change or hide facts. Someone has to pay their salary. Right now it's corporate sponsors that are ponying up. Even NPR receives a pretty hefty chunk of its funding from corporate sponsors. Like John is saying in this video, it's not really a problem if there's a wall between the sponsors and the news.

Maybe publicly funded news is the way to go? Something akin to BBC but that's legally insulated from government influence and provides "free" (you'd technically be paying for it with your taxes) news reporting.

*news *money

Adding video to channels (Money, News) - requested by MrFisk.