Setting the Wayback Machine to 1995: “Cheap Speech and What It Will Do”: Books, Magazines, and Newspapers: How the New Media Will Change What Is Available
[I thought it would be fun to serialize my 1995 Yale Law Journal article “Cheap Speech and What It Will Do,” written for a symposium called “Emerging Media Technology and the First Amendment.) Thirty years later, I thought I’d serialize the piece here, to see what I may have gotten right—and what I got wrong.]
[a.] More Diversity
Even more than with music, the lower distribution costs will change what is available, as well as how it’s available. High distribution costs have meant that media organs-newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations-control which commentators are available and which aren’t. Media organs may control based on their own political opinions, and they also control based on what their readers are likely to want. Even if a million people nationwide want to hear the Libertarian—or Socialist—view of things, there may be too few such people in each major market to make it worthwhile for newspapers to carry columns that appeal to these readers.
Lower distribution costs mean columnists and organizations can thrive if they appeal to even as few as several thousand people. Say columns cost one-half cent for transmission, one cent for paper, and one-half cent for royalties to the author. If even 30,000 people nationwide are willing to subscribe to a daily column—for about $7.50 a year—the columnist will make $150 a day, enough to keep body and soul together.
An organization like the ACLU, which might get one million subscribers, can make $3.5 million yearly on these terms, enough to hire editors, writers, and news gatherers, and perhaps even fund the organization’s other public interest activities. Poor speakers will get a soapbox; listeners with unusual tastes will find more material that will please them; and the mix of available commentary will be much less bland than it is today.
The same will happen for books. Besides making books cheaper and largely eliminating the problem of books being out-of-print, the new technologies will also allow more books to be published. Publication, in fact, will consist simply of the writer sending the book to some electronic databases. There’ll be no publisher, no veto power on the publisher’s part, and no need for the book to have mass appeal before someone will invest in it.
The story for newspapers and magazines will be somewhat different. Though their distribution costs will fall, their production costs will still be substantial. The n
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