Snagged from Techdirt:

People pay money to get online because they want to access content. If everything is going behind a paid wall, suddenly they feel like they're getting double-billed. Why do they need to pay to get online if there's nothing there?

It's such a dilemma for me to read stuff like this. On the one hand, I'm a user advocate, and the statements above make perfect sense. If I had a single mantra, it would be Thou Shall Not Piss Off Your Customer. And hiding your goodies behind a pay-to-see-it wall definitely qualifies as Ignoring The Mantra.

On the other hand, I'm an online content provider and have been in varying forms since '95, and the web is not made up of free content. No content is free, because someone had to sit there and write it. Then a company has to host it so you can access it. All this costs money, time, energy. And at some point, someone is going to want to be paid for it.

I think we're still some months or years away from a definitive solution. If one ever comes. :)

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