Quote - Ok, maybe i'm way wide of the mark on this, i hope i am, but IF renderosity does go this way you can bet your runtime it won't be too long before other sites join in and another good thing is sacrificed on the temple of the almighty insert favorite currency here

Well, at least we've always got the option of starting our own web site where we don't charge for anything. It is awfully expense just to run one of these as a hobby, though.

There was a time and a place where if you had land, and a man walking down the road picked an apple from your tree, that was his right. He couldn't take a whole bushel, but if he wanted to feed himself and he had no money, then it was okay for him to do that, even though you paid for the land and the seed and the fertilizer and the planters and the pickers. Somewhere along the line, someone got the idea to put up a fence and sell the apples.

There may come a day when there aren't any places on the web that will let you do the things you want to do at no charge, but I kinda doubt it. It's really too big a beast to fence in. There'll always be somebody who gets a few bucks for some server space and a bright idea to huddle up a community.

Probably the most important thing to remember is, though, no matter what gets done here, be it posting an image or executing a transaction in the market or moderating a forum, somebody, somewhere, is paying for it, somehow. The money's gotta come from somewhere. It might come from the generous pockets of somebody who owns the site, it might come from commerce transacted there, it might come from donations or taxes or gifts or selling of services. It has taken money to make the Internet (and the rest of the world, of course) go 'round since it started, and I think it probably will continue to do so for many, many lifetimes to come.