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01/20/2008: "Desire for "free" leads to greater control"

Marketers long ago figured out the attractiveness of free. For decades companies have been playing tricks using free to lure naive customers. But recently, our obsession with free has given rise to a new phenomenon - where the customer is never asked to pay. How? Because the business makes their money on advertising. Marketers are happy to pay for access to customers, who in turn love not having to pay. So the web plays the glorious role of middle man. Are we heading into dangerous territory? The paths that we are taking lead to confused customers at best; and monopolistic practices at worst. A culture where consumers think that increasingly more and more services should be free is not healthy.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/01/16/the-danger-of-free

[ Just like in politics. Hmm, maybe there's a pattern here about "if it's too good to be true, it probably is." ]

Even though the Internet still has no center, technically speaking, control can now be wielded, through software code, from anywhere. What's different, in comparison to the physical world, is that acts of control become harder to detect and those wielding control more difficult to discern.

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/01/a_spiders_web.php

[ So we have lots of free content online, but we pay for it in a more financially driven society. I get it: the free stuff causes the devil in the details of cost. So we get screwed by the stupidity of most of us. Neat-o. ]