Ahhh, more freetard thinking....(@CHRONOS)
Sure, you paid for your bandwidth - but did you pay for all of the array of ad-funded (not FREE, ad-funded) content on the web? That includes all the free email services, picassa, flickr, YouTube, every news site, El Reg, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger, and the whole lot?
No, you didn't. Nor did anyone else, at least not with a monthly check or subscription. You continue to think there is a free lunch, that "free" content is really free. No - almost all of it is AD-FUNDED, not free.
Either accept the ads, or lose the content, long-term. Stop half the ads, or make them less targeted and effective, and lose part of the content. And targeting is a KEY requirement now that click-through rates have fallen so low.
The problem with so many El Reg readers is that they are trying to make that choice for the general public, without even being honest to the public about the services they will lose...including ones that will never get built because there is no revenue to support it.
Once again, there is no free lunch...