[untilHellbanned]

Your article is from 2000. Consumer behavior and internet technology have changed massively since then.

Subscriptions can be ok but many don't want to pay $10/month for something they don't use $10 of (true of pretty much all services besides Netflix and spotify).

All digital content can make use of Bitcoin micropayments. Off-chain works too as there are still essentially no fees (again compared with the prohibitive $0.30 + 3% fee with credit cards).

Why watch an ad for 30sec when you can pay a fraction of a penny in Bitcoin and watch instantly? Onarbor, https://onarbor.com proposes exactly this.

[battani]

There are many more recent articles on the same topic — internet technology may have changed a lot, but consumer behavior hasn't. Consumers still want simple and predictable pricing.

When's the last time you paid at a paywall? It's just that the mental cost of calculating how much I'm spending when I'm spending loads of fractions of pennies everywhere is pretty big. To cancel your ads, just pay the monthly $10. It's simple, predictable, and covers you for all ads all the time.