Is it possible that the marginal cost of everything that can be conveyed by way of information technology is zero? This seems to be the leading characteristic of VoIP. It has been argued that there is no difference between serving web pages and pushing digitized voice through the IP pipe-line. That's true; they're just bits after all. The only thing that any of us seem to be willing to pay for now is bandwidth.

In the new model, the medium is the channel. In times past the medium had both physicality and content. A book can have something or nothing on its pages but it is still recognizable as a book in either case. When one buys a book one is not interested in it as a medium so long as one can discern what is on its pages. We are usually only interested in the message that the book carries, not the merits of its physical package. Traditionally, one could not separate the message of the book from its package however. Now we have technologies that can separate the two. What has been the response? No one wants to pay. On-line, for fee newspapers struggle. Music companies sue kids. E-book sales languish.

Let's posit this notion then. When content can be separated from delivery media, individuals will usually only pay for one of the two. This is the current dilemma of the phone companies. Now that conversation can be digitized and IP'ed, its worth is zero. Only the network carrying those bits has value. If I can 'FWD' or 'Skype' my friends and colleagues for 'free', why would I want to 'phone' them and pay?

It would seem that the best way to preserve a content revenue stream is to make sure that the content and delivery media do not get separated. Books are a good example. Sales are still pretty strong in the book trade, at least compared to the music business. (To digress, it could be shown that the music business is less a victim of downloading, than of its own incompetence.) Copying a book in printed form requires at least as many resources as the original, so it's usually cheaper to just buy the book. Only when publishers charge beyond the threshold of pain for the readership does copying become rampant. Think text books. But what happens when a book can be conveyed digitally? Do we want to pay? Have electronic books in any form been successful? Would you pay to read this blog? Not likely.

This merits greater consderation, so when I get some more time I'll try to expand on these thoughts by way of an article.