Rick responded, "Yeah, the 'hippies.'"
Free access to content, a founding principle of the Web's early developers, is soon to go the way of Flower Power. (You can learn why from two terrific articles on the topic, one in Atlantic Monthly, the other in Wired.)
Since babyhood, the Web has been captive to this principle. It was "digitally correct" to provide content free; boorish to ask dough for it.
But with the ascent of mobile apps, the model is about to flip.
We're soon to see most Web content become subscription-based. And the subscriptions will be pricey, to boot.
Capitalist pigs, one. Hippies, nothing.
It was nice while it lasted.
