The Web 2.0 in the mainstream internet allows the users to participate on the platform. The users of blogging websites give the users a voice, registered Youtube can learn how to use the video editor and Instagram followers can upload hundred of images without paying something.
What would happen, if one of these users is doing so and after he has uploaded 2 youtube videos he will ask the company to pay for the content. The reason is, that the user has invested work into creating the video and in exchange Youtube is asked for giving money in return. Propabily, youtube won't understand even the question because their business model is called Web 2.0. Which means, that the author doesn't get a single cent. He has to upload unique high quality content for free. Web 2.0 platforms are using unpaid labor of amateurs for increasing the traffic on the website and generate profit with advertisement. The outside world can watch all the videos for free, youtube earns a bit money with it, and the user who has made the clip gets nothing.
The Web 2.0 business model was so successful that other communities outside the mainstream internet have adapted the idea to fulfill their own needs. The scholarly community had in the 1990s the problem, that the amount of content was to low and the journal fees were to high. So they invented the term Open Access which means basically Web 2.0 for the academic publishing industry and this solved their problem. The authors were exploited, they get nothing for creating a dissertation, but they have to invest their time. Unpaid content allows the publishers to build a business model on top of it. The journal puts the pdf to the website, Google Scholar can index the content and as a result the same situation like in the Web 2.0 is available. All the content is delivered for free to the libraries, the online-plattform earn a little bit with advertaisment and the authors are exploited.
The communication works the same like with the disappointed youtube-user in the beginning. If the author asks the journal or the library to get paid for his new book he will receive the opposite. That means, the publisher didn't even have understand the question. The publisher beliefs that the author likes the work itself and do it without getting paid.
The Internet's role in society
The web 2.0 business model wasn't available from the beginning. In the early mainstream World Wide Web of the 1990s the idea was, that the content in the internet has to be paid. So called web workers in the Internet business get a salary from the society. In the period of Web 1.0 the idea was, that not all people are able to understand the technology. And the people who are not familiar with uploading content to the Internet has to pay for the class who can do.
This business model didn't worked. In the dot com bubble many of the internet companies have died, mostly because the rest of the society was interested to pay the bill without getting something in return. In the Web 2.0 business model the relationship between the internet and the normal society was adjusted. Now, the normal society exploits the resource internet. The people who are active online get no salary but has to provide all the computer games, news headlines, images and blogposts for free. The measurable result is, that the creation of 1000 blogposts and 1000 images costs nothing for the society, because the user has done so in their unpaid freetime. As a consequence the price for human generated content has dropped downto zero.
According to the latest statistics around 40 milion pictures are uploaded each day to Instagram. What would happen if these transactions were paid under the Web 1.0 business model? A fair price for a single image is 10 US$, so the society has to spend 400 million US$ each day for the incoming content. But they don't do so, because the Web 1.0 business model of paid content is not active in this case. Instead the world sees Instagram as a free content generator.
Scholarly publishing
The academic publishing system of the past worked similar to the Web 1.0 business model. The normal society has to pay for getting the content which is created by researchers. A library which is financed by taxpayers money has to spend billion of US$ to publishing houses and they are paying the authors.
Open Access disrupts this businessmodel and asks for a Web 2.0 for academic publishing. The idea is, that the society is allowed to exploit the ivory tower. The authors of content are forced into a weaker position and they have to work unpaid. Basically, it's about the relationship between the normal society and the academic community which is re-negotiated. Is the society strong enough to exploit the work of scholars or are the phd students allowed to exploit the society?
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