"What's Aught, But as 'Tis Valued?"

Increasingly, it seems, the idea that if one provides one's work on a non-profit basis, then it is essentially worthless. In the forefront of this movement are the likes of Rupert Murdoch, who is seeking to end 'free news' on the web, and doesn't want 'parasites' like Google News from 'stealing' his newspapers' content. Quite apart from the fact that the 'free news' he hates most - BBC online news - isn't actually 'free', I've already paid for it through my licence fee, his attitude shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what search engines and feed aggregators actually do. Most of us go out of our way to get our headlines picked up by them - they're simply a means of distribution. When someone clicks on your headline in - say - Google News, it is your site they go to, your adverts they see, your story they read. I'm not quite sure what there is to object to there! The problem with rapacious capitalists like Murdoch is that they cannot conceive of there being any motive for any kind of creative activity other than profit. I pity them. Greed rarely produces good art. But it isn't just Murdoch. Increasingly I find that the web is dominated by the 'get rich quick' merchants, promoting their various schemes for making 'millions' through your website.

Now, don't misunderstand me, I have nothing against people making money from their work. My problem with these guys is that it is all geared to making money without any work or creativity. Nowhere in their schemes do they ever address the key matter of content. If you don't have decent content, then your site really will be worthless. But clearly, content is irrelevant when it comes to making money. It's simply a question of using any means (no matter how dubious) of getting your site highly placed in search engines so that there's a chance the unwitting will click on your page and then click on your ads. Sites are just platforms for adverts. Of course, most of these net gurus have their own blogs, where they claim to provide great content, dispensing their wisdom. The reality is that all these blogs do is tell you about how much money they've allegedly made from their 'get rich quick' schemes. Utterly worthless, in other words. Some claim that you can sell any product using their methods. From what I can see, all that most people 'sell' using these schemes, is the scheme itself, by acting as an affiliate. Slowly, but surely, the web is being choked by their crap.

I fondly remember the 'good old days' of the web, when most sites seemed to be run, out of love, by amateurs. People had weird, wonderful and frequently creaky homepages. Today, of course, we all use social networking sites to establish our 'web presence'. I know that these are undoubtedly more efficient, more secure and far slicker, but they're also so bloody bland! I miss those old, highly individualistic, homepages! It all seemed like a brave new world, where old forms of commerce could be abandoned and new values invoked. An oasis of pure creativity. Sadly, it seems that, in its desperate quest for profit, the 'real' world has increasingly taken a grip on the web, and the amateurs - myself included - find ourselves ever more marginalised. But getting back to my original point - why should the only value placed on creative product be monetary? Surely it has value in itself? Just because I don't charge for my writing online doesn't make it inherently less worthwhile that anything produced by News International, for instance. But according to both Murdoch and the ever increasing numbers of web-profiteers (who have neither content nor actual products to sell), I'm just a crazy idiot.