http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=19552&tag=nl.e539

(Snip)

"The days of the free Internet will draw to a close over the next five years, according to the chairman and chief executive of IAC, the interactive services company which operates a collection of more than 30 Internet sites which produce $1.5 billion a year in revenue."

(Snip)

Isn't the internet already like that?

I mean technically you need to pay for dial up or a router right?

Good thing the world is ending in 2012.

Well this is different. He is charging you an entrance fee to a website. Like subscriptions for porn sites except this will apply to as many sites as possible. The man is deluded to think if he can get away with this without internet backdraft hitting him in the face like a brickwall.

WOAH WOAH WOAH BACK UP

DID YOU SAY PORN SITES?


NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

But porn sites already do that...

Well most quality porn is only available to those with subscriptions. But enough about that. Its about having subscriptions to going to websites like Google and Wikipedia.

People will just find (or make) ways to get it free, considering that that's the point of sites like Wikipedia.

Yeah. THIS BETTER NOT HAPPEN.

Every time you think the human race couldn't get any more retarded...

Isn't being free the POINT of things like Wikipedia and Google? I'm not gonna subscribe and pay to look at a Wiki article, that's grade-A bull s***.

"The fact that content and services on the Internet so far have been largely supplied for no charge is 'an accident of historical moment that will be corrected,' he said, in an era of 'creative chaos, that will span the next three to five years."

No, it's an accident of MAKING SENSE.

We should just leave him to his delusions.

Well, no, probably not. There is a good chance this is wrong. This 2012 Apocalypse hysteria is not a small nutjob movement based on fuzzy thinking and very little compelling evidence, it is in fact a very large nutjob movement based on a fuzzy thinking and very little compelling evidence. Need proof of that? An Amazon.com book search for "2012" generated 91,450 results. So one can conclude that there exists a market for this crackpot idea, a large market. Most intelligent people (most people reading this blog) understand, without me having to explain it to them, that this idea of a 2012 apocalypse is as wrong as the prediction that the world was going to end in the year 2000...oh no wait, the prophecy was ignorant to the fact that the Gregorian/Julian calendar started with the year 1, so actually the world was going to end in 2001, but that didn't happen either. If you need proof that the world did NOT end in 2000 or 2001, you need only notice that we are still here talking about the fact that it didn't happen.

copy pasta'd

Nice job at noticing sarcasm.

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Anyways, it's obvious less people will use the interwebz if you have to pay just to check your email.

Not completely so.
A lot of people would go pretty far to use their internet.

Yes, yes they would.