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It's not a serious question, it's cheap rhetoric. Just because I'm against the pollution caused by chemical plants dumping unprocessed waste into rivers, doesn

It's not a serious question, it's cheap rhetoric. Just because I'm against the pollution caused by chemical plants dumping unprocessed waste into rivers, doesn't mean I have to come up with solutions that allows the chemical industry to retain the same profit margins. Personally, if I want to get paid for something I create, I ask for something in return, usually money. I could be wrong, but afaik that's the way we have done things for a very long time. "If you want this, you also have to swallow this pile of shit, hell, if you even so much as glance in the general direction we'll start throwing shit at you" is a relatively recent business model, and I have a problem with it. The onus is not on me to come up with alternatives for people who don't like the effort and/or profit margins involved in the way we've traded and bartered goods and services for millennia and prefer to throw shit at people.

72deluxe 11y ago
I suppose the difficulty is that servers on the Internet are available publicly and therefore people expect free content from them. The problem is that people put content on there for £0.00 and we have expected it to be that cost (ie, nothing) ever since. It is obvious, however, that hosting servers is not without cost, nor is creating content without cost. The solution would therefore be to: a. not offer content free, b. attempt to support it with adverts Since option B is disliked by so many, the only logical option is A. I believe we should probably have a reintroduction/introduction of HTTP 402. I think that would make sense.
realityking 11y ago
I have an issue with people who want to consume content but offer nothing in return. Why do you think you're entitled to read the New York Times without paying for it either with money (paywall) or attention (ads). That's why I think the blanket use of ad lockers is unethical. Note I'm not saying the way we currently deal with ads is great or anything. They violate the users malware, are often infected with malware and sometimes make site plain unusable (usually not something intended by the site's owner) Since you seem to prefer the paywall, let me ask how many paid subscriptions do you have for websites which are otherwise supported via ads? (e.g. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, ArsTechnica, etc.)

72deluxe 11y ago

I suppose the difficulty is that servers on the Internet are available publicly and therefore people expect free content from them. The problem is that people put content on there for £0.00 and we have expected it to be that cost (ie, nothing) ever since. It is obvious, however, that hosting servers is not without cost, nor is creating content without cost. The solution would therefore be to: a. not offer content free, b. attempt to support it with adverts Since option B is disliked by so many, the only logical option is A. I believe we should probably have a reintroduction/introduction of HTTP 402. I think that would make sense.

realityking 11y ago

I have an issue with people who want to consume content but offer nothing in return. Why do you think you're entitled to read the New York Times without paying for it either with money (paywall) or attention (ads). That's why I think the blanket use of ad lockers is unethical. Note I'm not saying the way we currently deal with ads is great or anything. They violate the users malware, are often infected with malware and sometimes make site plain unusable (usually not something intended by the site's owner) Since you seem to prefer the paywall, let me ask how many paid subscriptions do you have for websites which are otherwise supported via ads? (e.g. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, ArsTechnica, etc.)