I understand what you’re saying about monopolies. It wouldn’t be a mandated monopoly, but rather a de facto monopoly, because multiple vendors in the space would make it impossible for any of them to pull in sufficient revenues to support the whole system.

There are no more monopolies in this context — except psuedo-monopolies created by momentum and useage. There is no mechanism to sustain a monopoly. Isn’t this is a key characteristic of the internet.

“Immediately you have a choice — your own choice — to see paid-for content (e.g. from the restaurant, or from the city government, say) or unpaid content (from users, from journalists) …”

Why would a user choose to view paid for content? Isn’t that going to dilute the eyeballs you have to sell to advertisers?

One key to selling advertising is your ability to assure the advertiser that people will see his or her ad. One of the problems with Web sites — especially news Web sites — is that they have so many pages. The chances that someone will see an ad (if it…