There are several developments that may spell the end of the free Internet as we know it. The Fox Cable Network, that owns The Wall Street Journal and the MySpace social and musicians network has plans to form an Internet Combine that will charge readers and viewers for access to newspapers and videos online.

Fox Chief Digital Executive Jonathan Miller wants to form a Combine that will charge for news distributed online and on cellphones. The Hearst Co.,The New York Times Co., The Tribune Co. and The Washington Post are also interested in participating.

The Wall Street Journal has more than one million paying subscribers but many of those subscriptions are paid for by the readers employers, America's corporations.

The Associated Press has been complaining about "news aggregators" (Web Portals) posting AP stories on their pages.

Fox Cable Network owner Rupert Murdock wants the cash to flow to his company from digital delivery of news, video content and Fox Films online.

Newspapers' online editions have a growing audience but their ads have been providing just 10% of the companies revenues. The whole newspaper industry has been suffering from the loss of it's two biggest advertisers, new car dealers and retailers as Chrysler Corporation and General Motors have pulled the franchises of thousands of new car dealers (Ford had already cut hundreds of it's dealers) and retail stores like Circuit City that used to run full-page ads several times a week went out-of-business. So in comparison to past years newspapers ad revenues are down 28%. 

The Fox Cable News website would register readers and collect payments across all Wesites and be able to track the geolocation of the readers thorough their cellphone or Internet Service Providers matching them with advertsing from their region and what categagory of articles they are reading.

Another development that may affect the Free Internet as we know it is the "Cap and Trade" Bill now in the US Senate. This "Carbon Dioxide Emmissions Tax" may add enough of an expense to the "server farms" that the Web Portals maintain where the Internet is stored and network connections are made that will be the End of the Free Internet as we know it.

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