[chflags]

Well said.

As a result of advances in technology, news, scholarly research, books, music, film, etc. can all be created and distributed by _anyone_, because it can be done at lower cost. This is bad news for some old school money-making schemes, but good news for consumers.

Perhaps consumers on the web are getting accustomed to "free" without any focus on quality. The classic arguments that lower cost means lower quality may be weakening.

Poor analogy: The computers we use today are less expensive than the ones we used in the 1980's. But who argues that they are lower quality? (I am not suggesting whether they are or not, just pointing out the arguments that people make.)