If you think you can make someone pay to visit your site, you're dreaming.
Unrestricted access to information is like garlic - it's all right if you have it, but it gets to be a bit uncomfortable if you don't and everyone around you does.
That, to me, is the one reason it is so difficult to create any sensible policies covering information access.
And that is exactly why I don't believe there should be controls - from the government or from providers themselves.
The biggest draw of the Internet is still the fact that every kind of content is available to everyone.
Where people and businesses continue to fail on the Net is by ignoring this fact (or forgetting to offer any content at all).
For example: why do content providers still believe that people will pay, or "subscribe", for information on the Web?
Three years ago I predicted that the only ones who would continue to fork out fees are those that subscribe to porn sites.
And that is still the case, yet almost every week there seems to be an announcement of someone converting a Web site to "subscription only".
It's still good content that makes a site successful (and that goes for shopping sites too -you can have the best interface in the world, but you won't get the traffic you need to support the operation without good products).
Even if you have good content, trying to make visitors to your site pay for it directly is a restriction on that information - one that I don't think Internet users will ever stand for.
That leaves those irritating old banner ads...ok, they can be annoying, but when you consider the alternatives, I think they're our best bet for keeping free speech free.
