This is the beginning of the end. When WebRing charges for membership, or limit the number of rings you can manage or be a member of, it’s time to say bye, bye. I was a member of 80 rings (yes, it’s true) and I still only had a few hits per day. Five rings? Forget it. Pay? Why? I’m only getting a few hits per day, remember, and besides, my site isn’t commercial. Bye, bye WebRing.

Of course, this is just the beginning. The free internet will soon be history. Soon we’ll have to pay to look at any home page.

Imagine this:

You’re going into town for some window shopping. As soon as you hit the road outside your home a gate is barring your way. You have to pay to drive on the road. (Naturally, you also have to pay for your home and all the costs connected with the running of a household). After a while you’re approaching the city center, the commercial part of town. New gate, new fee. You still haven’t seen any store and you’re far from a decision on whether you’re going to make a purchase or not. Next step is the little fee to enter the store.

All this before you’ve made up your mind to shop or not. Buy, yes. That will cost you, and that’s not a problem as far as I’m concerned. But what about the rest? What’s next? Pay to breathe? Open your eyes? Have a beating heart?

I know there’s no such thing as a ‘free lunch’. Ok, what’s free? Hardware? Are you kidding? Software? Internet connection? Where’s your free lunch? Now we also have to pay for mail addresses, webrings and so and so forth ad nauseam.

What happened to the free, fun internet? The playful, creative internet? Oh, right, it vanished along with ‘the customer’s always right’.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, it’s getting to be time for me to leave. I’m not even going to start on all the spying. That’s enough of a topic for a new post.