The Internet of today does not have the bandwidth to deliver 60 minutes of stereo quality audio into the home. But it does have adequate bandwidth to deliver FM quality songs one at a time. When decomposed into the smallest logical components that can be delivered over the Internet, the price of content is in the pennies. Breaking a single issue of a national weekly magazine into online content, the price of a simple, one-page article is about two cents. A longer feature article is worth about a quarter.
Political cartoons are worth less than a penny.
With content manufacturing and delivery costs falling into the pennies, billing cost needs to be reduced several orders of magnitude below that to keep pace. This is the essence of microcommerce. Unfortunately, while the above markets are ripe for the taking, the supporting commerce systems do not exist yet. We need the net equivalent of coins and small bills. We need not surmise what would happen to online commerce if these marginal products existed in the absence of a profitable payment collection system.