In the heady early days of the World Wide Web, before the dot-coms and even before most organizations realized that having a web page was not going to be optional, far-seeing pundits observed that information wants to be free. Be that as it may, someone has to pay for all the tech surrounding information, not to mention for the creation of that information in the first place. This has led to our current advertising vs. ad-blocking arms race. I comment on why this got started with a strategic mistake in an article published in Scientific American.