Paul Graham (Noted Y-Combinator venture capitalist, programmer, etc.) argues that we have never paid for “content”, rather, we have always paid for “medium.”   Publishers, he says, are literally in the business of selling paper.

In fact consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren’t really selling it either. If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn’t better content cost more? [1]

A copy of Time costs $5 for 58 pages, or 8.6 cents a page.The Economist costs $7 for 86 pages, or 8.1 cents a page. Better journalism is actually slightly cheaper.

Link (via BoingBoing, via /.)