The ability to cite, to save for personal use, to email (though not a mass email), and to quote (though not in entirety), is covered for our customers through their library card registrations. We already have a deal, paid for out of our budget and accessible 24/7 to people who hold a card, which is available at no fee to the cardholder. The ability to provide a live link to the article isn't included. They do cut us a break, as we're a nonprofit, and they can write that off to some extent.

The object, it seems to me, is to get money for the commodity.

If someone were to post a video of the play I wrote on YouTube, I would send a little note to YouTube to tell them to take it down, as a) the author (myself) gave no permission to record for public transmission, and b) it features minors whose families had not been consulted concerning having their children's faces broadcast on the internet. Except for the parent who posted it, of course. Before we put any child or teen's face on our website, we have to have a signed release from a parent or guardian. (YouTube would take it down, too.) According to your view, the only way a person can avoid intrusion of the internet in his or her life is to live in a cave and never interact with anyone. I beg to differ. Life is not a reality show to be shopped out to the world, and I take exception to the idea that such behaviour must be permitted because some people have the courtesy of wolverines and the intelligence of seafood.

You persist in saying that the work posted on the net is "free", mistaking "no fee" for "without cost". Believe me, as someone employed at a struggling nonprofit, who donates a significant portion of the materials I produce though unpaid overtime and the supplemental supplies and equipment I purchase, I know better than you what the hidden costs are. Someone always pays. The BBC is free? No. Paid for by British citizens through their rates. The course materials from MIT are free? No. Paid for by MIT alums (tax-deductable donations) and through grants (paid for by We The People). We just don't see the bill we pay, or somebody else pays. Someday the Brits may tire of underwriting other nations' news junkies. The materials MIT supplies may be accessed without fee, but if a student wants credit or even acknowledgment that he has used them, he had better have the deep pockets to pay for MIT's college credits.

AP, it appears, is about to attempt to recover some of their costs directly from users who currently avoid paying for their services. You are outraged by this. As a librarian who deals with the frustration of customer theft frequently, I sympathize with them. When things are provided without fee to people, the assumption a significant minority makes is that the services and materials are without value, or that they're free to the supplier as well. They aren't. Every time I find a barcode and security strip removed and the material gone, it's because someone thought they had a right to keep and use property that doesn't belong to them. I don't write the books and magazines, but I do spend a lot of time developing the collection, using a budget that gets smaller all the time, partly because of theft. I understand AP's position viscerally.

You mention that even tiny rural libraries have the potential to access the information available on the internet. This is true, especially that direct object, "the potential". Without infrastructure, hardware, and sustainable budgets to maintain them, and the little detail of getting people and hardware together, "the potential" is all there is. Access itself isn't free, either. The fabled world of infinite access to knowledge is still far away for billions of people.

Sure, it's easier to get hold of information, art, and metadata, including opinion pieces. Don't delude yourself: ease of transmission is not the same as without cost. Free speech is a political statement, not an economic one.