Is Free Dead?
triplefox: The default state of the world is free. Non-free happened because people decided that controlling content distribution for profit was a good idea, several hundred years ago. What if it isn't, or isn't anymore?I can provide an example of how non-free would hurt you. If every site HN linked to was a pay-site then HN itself, Digg, Reddit, all those sites would suddenly cease to exist. All the fluidity of trading links back and forth would be gone as nobody would be able to afford to investigate what content is good anymore.In fact, even Google would be in trouble if everything were a pay site. How could they possibly afford to pay to crawl every site on the internet? And, for that matter, what about all those startups that are based around data-mining existing web content?The argument goes, "We can afford to produce better content by putting it behind a pay-wall." But when taken to the extreme, it's inefficient. No content is so good that it can replace the service of Google and other search engines. Or worse, in the ultra-non-free-world, Google would go from being a de-facto monopoly to a regulated monopoly; they strike up a pay-to-play deal for a site to even EXIST on their search engine and the entire Web is at their mercy. (we're not even talking about placement here)It sounds ridiculous, but it's exactly the kind of thing we've let happen to copyright and patents in the past. By entering into these complex arrangements of enclosure, you end up with a battle between governments and big business that squashes the rights of individuals beneath regulation and fees.