Re: The Quantum State .... where this is that and also able to be anything else completely different
I think you meant "random anonymous internet people.
However, we can post comments because that's the culture (and to a smaller degree policy), not because the researchers make money. Nobody made money off of Community Memory, BITNET, Usenet or Fidonet[0]. Seems that humans as a whole gossip for free. (::gasp:: Say it ain't true!) It wasn't until Delphi, BIX, CI$ and AOL came along that anybody monetized it, and even then it was not all that much money per user, barely covering costs. The gootards, farceb0rk, twatter and the like are johnny-come-latelys, proving that excessive profiting from the commons ruins it for everybody. Even though they really aren't all that profitable, when you eyeball their Wall Street performance objectively ... but that's a rant for another day.
[0] Except the good porn sites, of course. But they had content people found to be worth paying for ... take THAT, prudes! What did YOU think the "ogle" on "go ogle" came from?