Re: [syndication] XML, ad revenue and the future of the Internet.

["Dave Winer" <dave@userland.com>]

Kevin, none of these arguments lead anywhere, imho, if the business model is
Get-VC-Then-IPO, there are no interesting arguments about business models.
For all we know Amazon and SlashDot would be more highly valued if they
disappeared, after all the losses would stop then, right? Forgive me for not
understanding the rules here. In the meantime I hope Amazon does support
XML, even though I would boycott it because of their insidious patents that
keep coming on line every day it seems.

To Laird, I've been trying to think of a response that hasn't already been
said, somewhere sometime. Factor this in, the people and companies who
publish RSS *want* people to replicate their links. Further, I'm a believer
in the Internet routing around outages. So if the stock exchanges own the
stock data, and they want to be paid for them, then eventually the Internet
will invent a new stock exchange that is willing to take advantage of that,
zig to their zag, route around the outage. I wouldn't be surprised if the
new European and Asian stock exchanges which are all-electronic, take a
different view of this. They see NASDAQ, NYSE and SEC as behemoths, kind of
the same way all-electronic publishers view ones who want the Web to work
just like print.

Dave







----- Original Message -----
From: "burtonator" <burton@relativity.yi.org>
To: <syndication@egroups.com>
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2000 12:40 AM
Subject: [syndication] XML, ad revenue and the future of the Internet.


> I seem to be starting too many new threads here.  Somebody smack me :)
>
> I think no one will argue with me when I say that XML is very powerful
> and certainly has a large future on the Internet.  I am starting to
> worry about a couple of issues.  The XML technology set is very
> powerful, however, a lot of companies won't ever use XML to represent
> their data structures because it will be a *clear* loss of revenue for
> them (maybe entire market sectors).
>
> In a perfect world, the model would work like this.  Someone creates an
> XML Schema/DTD and then creates an instance of this document.  The then
> add a stylesheet for the UI.
>
> The problem is that if someone like Amazon/Slashdot were to do this,
> they would go out of business.
>
> The problem is already starting to manifest itself.  Slashdot publishes
> out its content via RSS.  The trouble is they leave all the
> <description> tags blank because if they did they would just be an XML
> server and couldn't IPO or make any money.
>
> So what is the solution to this problem?  Honestly this scares me.  XML
> is huge but will never reach its full potential because companies don't
> want to be disintermediated.  The last post on stock quote info is a
> relevant example.  If Yahoo just marked up a stock page as XML and stock
> quote data I could use this pretty much with out legal problems (XML
> doesn't specify content rendering so I don't think it would be
> stealing).
>
> ---
>
> Could this be a competitive advantage for some companies?  If Amazon.com
> doesn't publish their content in XML then EBay could compete by making
> their web app as an XML communication infrastructure (so that I could
> participate in an EBay auction from within another site).
>
> Is this part of a larger problem with regard to content reproduction and
> licensing?  Basically the whole Napster/MP3/DVD problem rehashed into
> XML?
>
> Should the W3C deprecate XHTML and require publishers to use XML with a
> new stylesheet rev for UI (XSLT to HTML would not work if XHTML were
> deprecated).  This might be harsh.
>
> Should the Internet culture finally realize that ad revenue is a faulty
> business model and admit that content is a commodity and that it should
> be free ( as in Freedom not in Free Beer ).  Maybe based a revolution on
> a FCL (Free Content License).
>
> ---
> Kevin A Burton (burton@apache.org)
> http://relativity.yi.org
> Message to SUN:  "Please Open Source Java!"
> To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence;
> supreme
> excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
>     - Sun Tzu, 300 B.C.
>
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