[eccr] Subscriptions herald end of Web freedom?

Title: Subscriptions herald end of Web freedom?

Subscriptions herald end of Web freedom? 
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Surfing the Web these days requires two hands -- one to click the mouse,
the other to dig into your pocket to pay fees demanded by sites that
used to be free. Every day, it seems, another desperate dot-com
concludes it's better to charge a smaller congregation of visitors than
to lose money on a mass audience looking to get something for nothing. 

"The presumption has always been you would have free access to almost
everything for one basic price of admission. That's probably not going
to be the case any longer," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew
Internet & American Life Project, which studies online trends. Free
online content hasn't disappeared. Most fee-based Web sites still give
away some of their wares. 

But the freebies are becoming the online equivalent of a supermarket's
food samples -- tantalising morsels designed to coax sales of more
satisfying amounts. "The stuff that really has some value is going to
have to be paid for," said Charlie Fink, president of
AmericanGreetings.com, which began charging at the end of last year. 


Source: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/03/18/web.feedom.ap/index.html - CNN