And the bandwidth played on (blogging may be in trouble)

Scary post at one of my favorite political blogs this morning:

http://billmon.org/archives/001236.html

Back in January, I wrote a post about a session on the future of blogging at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in which I expressed a certain foreboding about that future:

<snip>

Unfortunately, for Whiskey Bar the future is now.

No, I'm not selling out to Time Warner ABC Disney Capital Cities Fox Viacom Clear Channel General Electric Microsoft Inc. But I have been informed by the owner of my host service that, effective April 1, he's going to start charging me for bandwidth usage.

He doesn't have much choice: He's just a wholesaler of space on other people's (big soulless corporate people's) machines. They've started charging him for bandwidth. And he's not at the bottom of the capitalist food chain -- I am.

Whiskey Bar's answer is to post a Paypal link and ask for donations. But he's not happy about that solution, even though his is a well-established blog and it might actually work. I'm more concerned about blogs in general -- their prospects for diversity, their ability to express non-mainstream opinions, and potential barriers to new bloggers setting up shop.

Liberal blogs have suddenly emerged as the last, best hope of the left and of the Democratic Party in general. If cheap blogging becomes impossible, and we are left to the mercies of the soulless corporate media, there won't be much of a future for freedom and progressive ideals in this country.

So I'd like to see some brainstorming about what the options are. Would a Soros or one of the other deep-pocked left-leaning philanthropists pay to set up a server farm where liberal blogs could hang out? What sort of costs would be involved? Who would administer it and how would you keep out the disrupters while encouraging pure-hearted troublemakers?

This is important, people -- potentially as crucial to the future of democracy as BBV. I'd like to see the same intensity of thought being applied to it.

A little over dramatic there. Blogging is not the only way to have a website, and the cost of paying for a blog hardly compares to the importance of an election being stolen via BBV.

I've become big fan of various weblogs on the 'net mainly thanks to the DU and the content that is discussed here. I've decided to become a contributing reader on one site, but I really read about 10 to a greater or lesser degree....and I think I should probably contribute to them as well. So here's what I am wondering-

Is there a website clearinghouse where weblogs can sign up as members so as to facilitate revenue disbursement. For instance, I'd like to make 1ea $150.00 contribution for the next 6 months. I'd like to contribute-

30% to say, DU
10% to say, MWO
15% to say, TPM
15% to say, Eschaton
10% to say, TBOGG
10% to say, Truthout
5% to say, Whiskey Bar
5% to say, Cooperativerearch.com

Your list would be different, weighted by your mindshare. Every 6 months, you can change your $ amount, list, and percentage. This seems like a great way to support the entire community and reward everyone who contributes to the promotion of the progressive/liberal ideas and our common (and uncommon) agendas.

It would also give tangible proof of the relative value we place on the almost infinite choices. And it makes it convenient for the consumer to manage his/her funding choices.

Anything like this out there?

Making it easier for people to support the leading progressive blogs and sites could only be a good thing. But I'm concerned that doing that alone would produce something like today's music industry -- which puts a lot of money into the reigning stars and almost none into developing new artists. Perhaps a system like what you suggest could also automatically channel 10% of each contribution into a general fund for the support of newer bloggers.

And in the long run, I really do worry about a setup where all the servers and bandwidth are under corporate control. Marketplace censorship is just as real a threat as government censorship, and far more insidious. I think that eventually we-the-people will need our own hardware in order to maintain genuine freedom of expression.

I doubt that a 10% general fund would be meaningful or practical, given 100s of thousands of potential blog sites. Small sites that have loyal readers would still benefit from this concept, but my point is to reward the influential blogs, by consumer valuation, as well as provide an easy mechanism to support these bloggers.

Billmon is one of my favorites and as he gets more widely read, his costs are going up.