The capitalists are coming

So-called paywalls are coming to the Internet as surely as George Hearst came to Deadwood. We'll look back on this time of bickering between the AP and bloggers and the Jarvises and traditional journalists with a mix of nostalgia and regret once the big-monied interests move in, buy up the property and build their grand gates and fences. They're just waiting for the digital frontier to get settled before they move in to stake their claim.

Or, as Barry Diller said:

...Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, joining the refrain of media moguls who say an era of free Internet content is ending.

The media and technology executive, whose company runs the Ask.com search engine and the Match.com dating service, said it’s “mythology” to view the Internet as a system of free communications.

“It is not free, and is not going to be,” Diller said today at the Fortune Brainstorm conference in Pasadena, California.