Subject: Exploring Synergy between Content Aggregation and the Publisher Ecosystem

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 May 2019 16:36:30 -0400

I am just writing up a paper for the ESCAPE workshop
https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/escape-workshop/

It is really not clear to me what the focus is here. The CFP swings from
suggesting the focus is on the business issues to requesting proposals
backed by running code and back. We are told point solutions are
discouraged but what is aggregation if not a point solution.

We have a clear problem in the content business. While the current
situation is certainly good for the dominant content discovery services in
short term, it is clearly unsustainable. Content discovery is worthless
unless there is content to be discovered.

Seems to me that maybe we could take a break from some of our other
conversations and take note of the fact that maybe the lack of a payment
mechanism for Web content is starting to be a limiting factor.

Another question that has been greatly concerning Tim Berners-Lee of late
is the concentration of the Web in a very few hands. While there is
certainly a commercial aspect to this concentration, there is also a
political one which should maybe be of greater concern to us. It is
certainly of very great concern to professional politicians and their
advisers.