And so you have these two sides talking past each other. Nothing gets done. The problem gets worse every year. And the lines get blurrier. It doesn't help our cause when well-meaning idealists propose unworkable solutions.
Electronic commerce is here to stay.
Every study shows that users want to act on the information they find on the Web. Other business models have largely failed. Subscriptions don't work, except for special-interest niches like financial news, sports and sex. So I hope we can move on and stop viewing e-commerce as a scourge and instead embrace it as a promise and opportunity to serve our readers. I'd like to suggest that we frame the question a bit differently.