The author is ignoring a very fundamental concept: Ideas are as cheap as the transmission medium 20 years ago, the two cheapest ways to mass-transmit ideas wer

The author is ignoring a very fundamental concept: Ideas are as cheap as the transmission medium 20 years ago, the two cheapest ways to mass-transmit ideas were television and newspapers. With the Television, advertising dollars allowed the user to buy the connection and get content for free. The newspaper model required the consumer to buy both the content AND the supply chain, but the costs were low enough and advantages large enough that newspapers prospered. Now we have the Internet, and content follows the Television cost model. Ideas have little markup now - server costs, bandwidth, and time. And time isn't even worth that much! If you demand the user to pay you for your time, you're up against thousands of people screaming on their own soap boxes for free. Are you really offering something so special that someone couldn't get it on a site sponsored by advertising? The future WILL be free because sites have already figured out how to monetize free with advertising money. If the dead-tree papers can't figure it out soon, they're going to find themselves with a big paywall and no eyeballs. For instance, it's very telling that Murdoch sites still show their 'paywall' content if you're referred by Google News