The first great cliché of the Internet was 'Information wants to be free.' The notion was that no one should have to pay for 'content' words and pictures and stuff like that and, in the friction-free world of cyberspace, no one would have to. The reigning notion today is that the laws of economics are not, after all, suspended in cyberspace like the laws of gravity in outer space. Content needs to be paid for on the Web just as in any other medium. And it probably has to be paid for the same way most other things are paid for. by the people who use it. We tried charging the customers at Slate. It didn't work. Future experiments may be more successful. But meanwhile, let's look again at this notion that in every medium except the Internet, people pay for the content they consume. It's not really true. TV is the most obvious case. A few weeks ago a producer from 'Nightline' contacted Slate while researching a possible show on the crisis of content on the Internet. He wanted to know how on earth we could ever be a going business if we gave away our content for free. I asked how many people pay to watch 'Nightline'. Answer none. People pay for their cable or satellite transmission, and they pay for content on HBO, but 'Nightline' and other broadcast programs thrive without a penny directly from viewers. There are plenty of differences, of course, and the ability of Web sites to support themselves on advertising is unproven. But 'Nightline' itself disproves the notion that giving away content is suicidal. Now, look at magazines. The money that magazine subscribers pay often doesn't even cover the cost of persuading them to subscribe. A glossy monthly will happily send out $20 of junk mail—sometimes far more to find one subscriber who will pay $12 or $15 for a yearly subscription. Why? Partly in the hope that she or he will renew again and again until these costs are covered. But for many magazines including profitable ones—the average subscriber never pays back the cost of finding, signing and keeping him or her. The magazines need these subscribers in order to sell advertising. Most leading print magazines would happily send you their product for free, if they had any way of knowing (and proving to advertisers) that you read it. Advertisers figure, reasonably, that folks who pay for a magazine are more likely to read it, and maybe see their ad, than those who don't. So magazines make you pay, even if it costs them more than they get from you. This madcap logic doesn't apply on the Internet, where advertisers pay only for ads that have definitely appeared in front of someone's 'eyeballs'. They can even know exactly how many people have clicked on their ads. So far advertisers have been insufficiently grateful for this advantage. But whether they come around or not, there will never be a need on the Internet to make you pay just to prove that you're willing. So maybe the Internet's first great cliché had it exactly backward: Information has been free all along. It's the Internet that wants to enslave it. The predominant idea of today is that