Are we the baddies?
The problem here is everyone:
Users inevitably want everything to be free, both in the gratis (no payment) sense and in the libre (no rules, restrictions, or limits) sense, and from the beginning the Internet tried - and later pretended - to offer exactly that.
Makers inevitably want those things, too, but also want to be able to live indoors and have access to comforts like clean water, survivable food, safe shelter, and reliable medical support - which, oddly are also things that users want.
Corporations, in the generic business structure sense, want to be both continuously successful, which falls under the survival sense, and to be free in the libre sense. This is unsurprising because corporations, like Soylent Green, are people.
It all goes horribly wrong when one or more of the above groups start thinking that they should have more power and authority than the other group(s), and, perhaps inexplicably, the other groups tacitly or explicitly agree. This is where corporations shine - for some values of "shine": they already exist and operate at (relative) scale and are equally already hierarchically structured while users and makers tend to be more like loosely affiliated autonomous collectives.
All the corporations need do is make something interesting, offer it at little or no cost (e.g. "no worries, the first taste is free"), and, once the clientele are hooked, start raising prices and adding rules about what the users - and the corporations - are allowed to do.
The astonishing part is that it works every time. Nearly every user rebellion is quelled, if they start at all, and quickly; torches and pitchforks cast aside and users begrudgingly give up literally anything to get back on the pipe's sweet, sweet oblivivion.
So, are we the baddies? Too often, yes, whether by direct action or passive acceptance.
[weeping_angel_icon_goes_here]
(or just a bowl of tears)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
