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Nothing on the internet is free and has never been. If it appears free that's because somebody pays for it with time, money, hardware, or lost opportunities.
by dgudkov 5y ago
Nothing on the internet is free and has never been. If it appears free that's because somebody pays for it with time, money, hardware, or lost opportunities.
- karaterobot 5y agoOkay, but that's true of everything. The spirit of the question is, why is the web especially egregious?
- dgudkov 5y agoProbably, because several factors have conflated and reinforce each other: 1) Historically, everything on the web used to be "free" and this is still an implicit assumption for internet users. 2) Payments are not part of the HTTP protocol; micropayments never materialized 3) The web is too good for advertisers - targeting, reach, scalability are unmatched compared to off-line advertisement. This supports p.1 above and hinders p.2. It's a vicious circle.
- rchaud 5y agoidk, back in the day ISPs offered FTP servers so that customers could launch and run their own sites. The internet was marketed as a consumption + creation tool. It's now slanted almost entirely to the former.