Web content was born to be free

In response to the Aug. 9 Perspectives column by Charles Cooper, "":

This is a response to your column and to the Aug. 12 "amen" response to it by Net citizen Gerhard Bardach (Vienna, Austria). The CNET masthead indicates that you live and work in San Jose, Calif., in the north-central portion of the land of the freeway. But you write and talk like you were born and bred in New Jersey, New York, Taxachusetts or some similar land of toll roads and bridges, or in an EU socialist democracy like Herr Bardach. Say it isn't so, Joe...er, I mean Charles and Gerhard.

It appears that you, Gerhard and your "We'll Gladly Pay" brethren are in lock step and among the "we" who "long ago discarded the quaint notion that folks are somehow entitled to a free lunch." Not all the Net citizens who reside in the land of the free and the home of the brave, and elsewhere in cyberspace, agree. We believe the information highway should be based upon the California freeway model, not the NJ/NY toll road model. This group of "we" out here in the vast e-wasteland believes in "Free Web for All and Web Freedom for all." We are not the freeloading, e-smorgasbord-loving beggars you allude to, nor do we live in Lower Slabovia.

Our common-sense schnorrer view of the Internet will never equal your "common cents" Baron Charles de Rothschildesque view of it. This is the new millennium, and cyberspace and information "just gotta remain free."

Joseph Poliakon
Satellite Beach, Fla.