Programmer and essayist Paul Graham offers a thoughtful rebuttal to any current publishers who think they are content providers. Says Graham: They're not.

Almost every form of publishing has been organized as if the medium was what they were selling, and the content was irrelevant. Book publishers, for example, set prices based on the cost of producing and distributing books. They treat the words printed in the book the same way a textile manufacturer treats the patterns printed on its fabrics.

In Graham's view, newspapers, book publishers, record labels, and their brethren are framing their problem the wrong way. Most are defending their existing revenue structures -- the places along the distribution channel where they've traditionally been paid. Will the old players be able to win at the new game? Graham isn't so sure (''The optimal ways to make money from the written word probably require different words written by different people''). But he does offer a rubric to tell the winners from the losers in the coming marketplace:

When you see something that's taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn't have before, you're probably looking at a winner. And when you see something that's merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue, you're probably looking at a loser.