> So now, because of bad actors, I need to pay for the privilege of watching a website or using a service that was meant to be free? No, thanks.
First of all - I suppose it should be very cheap. So, real humans will not pay much.
Second - why do u think that websites are meant to be free? They provide some service, so its a rather strange that the internet is so free (in both senses). I think, this freeiness is allowed to greatly speed up popularization. But for me is obvious that it can demand payment for service.
And third - service owner really meant it to be free, I don't see any problems with this in my idea. It can still provide free service.
I'm not saying websites can't demand payments for service, I'm just saying it's bad if it's a necessary fix for "scrapers are destroying the basic social contract of the web".
The internet is already like that, but for some reason the payment only extends as far as the recipient's ISP, not the actual recipient. Most senders pay a flat rate, but their ISP doesn't.
So now, because of bad actors, I need to pay for the privilege of watching a website or using a service that was meant to be free? No, thanks.
I don't have a solution, but "break how the web currently works" is not one I would accept all willy nilly.
EDIT: yes, I realize we already broke the web (with Anubis, cloudflare, recaptcha etc) but I think we should resist slowly breaking it further.