There’s been some interesting discussion over at ButtUgly (also cont’d at Dragon/kolibri) about copyright owner’s worries of how to make money in a digitalized world.

I’m a strong believer in the subscription model myself, but that doesn’t mean I’d exlude the (somewhat dreaded) advertising solution either. Unless we’ll see some third, perhaps yet completely unthought-of solution arise, I believe the future will be a mixture of the two models, somewhat like the Finnish television currently is in that we’ll have advertiser-paid “channels” providing content, and we’ll have ad-free “channels” providing different content on a paid subscription basis.

Although the tiny libertarian in me finds the current, somewhat wild west like situation very appealing, I feel that I’m a realist in thinking it will not last – not because of the opposition by the organizations vehemently defending their scarcity-based business models, but rather because of the higher level phenomenon they so much fear: that of scarcity disappearing due to digitalization, which is slowly but surely making their traditional business obsolete.

The fact that they’re willing to die defending doing what they’ve always done instead evolving is sad, not for their sakes but for practically everyone else’s; by dragging on and artificially prolonging the life of their soon-to-be entirely obsolete business they’re screwing the consumers, the cultural development, and most of all they’re screwing the people their business is originally built for: the content creators.

Ethically, there probably isn’t a worse time to be at the creative end of the chain than now, if you’re aware of what is happening around you with digitalization. Either you have to stick with the traditional distribution businesses and their channels, which is a sinking ship, or you are virtually on your own, trying to make money in an environment which is used to getting content for free, because the proper channels providing paid-for content haven’t been developed yet due to the bullheadedness of people who should have been busy doing so.