The Paid Internet

If you owned a record store ten years ago and I walked in the front door and asked you to give me some of the merchandise you were currently selling, you'd likely throw me out on my butt.

However, at the serious onset of the Internet in 2000, business establishments, retailers, publishers and entertainment companies knowingly cooperated with the emerging free Internet and began to giveaway content for free.

In some cases, businesses resisted and consumers did a workaround. I'm thinking of the record industry where young people found ways to steal music, share it illegally or quasi-legally through bit torrent&hellip