Daring Fireball is decidedly not free. It’s simply a question of who gets charged. Readers don’t, but sponsors and advertisers do. What makes it work so well (so far) is that this makes everyone happy. I’m earning a nice salary. Readers get to read my writing in exchange for a small portion of their attention which I direct toward ads. And sponsors and advertisers are happy to pay a fair price to reach an audience of good-looking, intelligent readers such as yourself. But there’s nothing free about it.

Tangentially, John Gruber posted a nice explanation of how his blog, Daring Fireball is not free to read, as it is ad supported. In this paragraph, he clearly summarises the relationship between all interested parties in the publishing of his content.

This is hugely important, because the same model applies to vast quantities of internet publishing, video and music. One of the bigger challenges modern consumption culture has to overcome is a broken perception of ‘free’. The mistaken belief that everything on the internet is free is distorting people’s judgement of value, and skewing their expectations (and demands) of services.

For example: Netflix is clearly not free because you pay them a monthly subscription to watch their streaming video. But though Hulu allows you to go to their website and just hit play, it’s not free either. The programming that Hulu distributes has not been given away, nor is it worthless. You’re just paying for it differently.

Source: Daring Fireball Linked List: Seth Godin Says Malcolm Gladwell Is Wrong Via: daringfireball.net.