Saying it will become a paid system in 5 years is basically living in a delusional bubble. It has been a paid system from the start.
Everyone pays for the Internet already. We pay for the speed of the connection. Some pay email providers. Some pay for online storage. Some pay by buying products online. Some pay for rare and valuable information or to receive specific publications. We also pay with the attention we give to advertisements on our favorite sites. We pay with the time we waste sorting through all the spam we get from advertisers.
Why doesn't it surprise me that it's an old fart saying how people have always paid for content and will continue? People have always been able to listen to the radio and watch television for FREE, too. That swings both ways and means nothing.
That sort of ancient-mindset is why the recording industry is having so much trouble these days. It reeks of the mindset of control freaks from a 50's industry like the RIAA or MPAA. Start charging for or somehow limiting the content people already get for free and you will go bankrupt unless you can add enough value to justify the charges.
These days people want more from content. These days the REAL product you need to sell is improved quality of life. How will your content make my life better? How will it save me time? How will it smooth out my daily routine? Focus on that instead of how much you can squeeze out of somebody because of X bytes of your bandwidth they used.
What people might pay for is value-added and highly-targeted content available on their own schedule. If you want an example of the RIGHT way to get people to pay for a content service, look at what TIVO did for TV or NetFlix with instant Internet streaming. Even digital music purchased through iTunes is an example of how to sell content to a busy, overstressed public. Charging by the megabyte will only piss them off by giving them one more thing to count and worry about. Make it simple. Make it transparent. Make it worry free. Make our lives better. Then we'll talk.
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