I find that hard to believe, but I've heard a lot of folks claiming it's true and 5 years always seems to be the magic number.
If it got to a point where I was being nickel and dimed to death for everything I wanted to read, hear and see online I'd be ready to live with just email.
There was a time when I was running an online CD store, selling a ton on ebay and running Freeze-Frame.
Ebay was destroyed with outrageous fees and people that apparently sell stolen goods (since they seem to be able to sell at well under wholesale prices), the CD is all but dead. If indeed FFR goes away then all I need the internet for is e-mail and stock trading.
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Traditional media will be run-over by the unbelievable plenty found online, said IAC chairman and chief executive Barry Diller, but not before the era of free passes into an age of paid apps. I absolutely believe the Internet is passing from its free days into a paid system. Inevitably, I promise you, it will be paid, Diller said in a keynote discussion at the Advertising 2.0 conference in New York. The plethora of free content available online, he asserted, is but an accident of historical moment that will be corrected. And all within the next five years.
This will involve not only subscriptions or basic one-time purchases, but rapid-fire micropayments through an online app store, similar to Apples storefront for iPhone applications or Amazons one-click checkout. Diller said an easy and quick purchase system like this would clear the way for paid content to replace the free chaos online.
This needs to happen because traditional media radio, television, both using a limited spectrum of delivery will soon be run over by this much more open, much much less controlled [medium] that is not based on scarcity, but based on unbelievable plenty, Diller said.
It'll probably happen, and if it does, I'd have to pay for some type of internet content because both of my girls need it for school.
You can bet if the cash-strapped school districts have to cough up more money to pay to keep the schools connected, they'll somehow make sure that parents have to pay too.......we'll probably get charged some kind of "service fee" from the school so our kids can use the internet while they're at school.