GEORGE SIMPSON on folks who complain about Internet ads:

But I am going to wonder why this noisy crowd that hates all forms of online advertising isn't picketing up and down 6th Avenue ranting at the broadcast networks for "taking over my screen" for ads and not just for 15 or 30 seconds, but for three or four minutes at a time at least four times an hour? And that doesn't count the promo craplets that run on the screen during the programming.

Where were these outraged voices when newspapers (bless their dying little hearts) started taking over 9/10th of each page with display ads for department stores? Not a lot of "screen real estate" left on those pages for news was there? Why weren't there riots when these fine folks settled into their $10 seats for the 7:15 start of a movie, only to suffer through the screen being "taken over" for the next 8 to 12 minutes with ads? How about those September issues of magazines that are (at least used to be) 80% ads? Where was the outrage of having to flip past spread after spread of "full screen takeovers" to find the first edit story?

When people sit down at their PCs a strange sense of entitlement overcomes them. They think they are entitled to free content. Free apps. Free movies. Free music. Free research that 20 years ago they would have paid hundreds of dollars for to get in a week - that now takes 15 minutes. Not that the internet is free. The ISPs are doing everything possible to make it more expensive to deliver service at speeds which would be considered an insult and a rip off in most other developed countries. But that only covers the hardware to pump the Web into your home, not the billions of pages of news, entertainment, games, porn, etc. that are available within a few clicks.

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