Research

To back up my rationale of the viewer as a prop from an alternate reality where the internet was never free - I have done some research on the effect of the internet on traditional media, especially newspapers. News corporations have been gradually making more & more of a loss due to the fact that people nowadays expect everything online for free & will do anything to avoid paying for content.
Also the use of net neutrality means that all content is treated the same way, both by producers & consumers, means that people expect the news to be free, just like all the other content online.
This can also be applied to other media on the internet, such as video (which will be 90% of all web traffic by 2013), music & pictures - if the majority of people online will find a way round paying full price for this content, how (apart from advertising) can traditional media make money?